Polidori, John William

The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature | 2003 | 639 words | Copyright

Polidori, John William (1795–1821), physician and aspiring writer. After completing his medical training at Edinburgh he was employed as personal physician to Byron, and engaged to travel with him in Europe for the summer of 1816; Polidori's posthumously published Diary (1911) records these experiences. During this time he participated in the famous ghost-story competition that led to Mary Shelley's writing of Frankenstein, and to Polidori's own novel Ernestus Berchtold (1819). His story The Vampyre (based on a fragment by Byron and first published under Byron's own name) laid the foundations for modern vampire fiction.

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MARGARET DRABBLE and JENNY STRINGER. "Polidori, John William." The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature. 2003. Encyclopedia.com. 10 Feb. 2012 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>.

MARGARET DRABBLE and JENNY STRINGER. "Polidori, John William." The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature. 2003. Encyclopedia.com. (February 10, 2012). http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O54-PolidoriJohnWilliam.html

MARGARET DRABBLE and JENNY STRINGER. "Polidori, John William." The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature. 2003. Retrieved February 10, 2012 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O54-PolidoriJohnWilliam.html

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