John William Polidori

Born in London on September 7, 1795, John William Polidori studied medicine and earned an M.D. while still very young. He worked as Lord Byron’s physician and traveled with him on the Continent, placing him close to one of the most famous literary circles of the Romantic era.

Polidori is remembered above all for The Vampyre (1819), a story that became hugely influential in the history of horror fiction. Published at first in a way that led many readers to connect it with Byron, the tale later became firmly associated with Polidori and is now widely seen as an early foundation of the aristocratic vampire in English literature.

His life was brief and troubled, ending in London in 1821 at the age of 25. Even so, his reputation has endured because of the lasting power of The Vampyre and the unusual mix of medicine, travel, and literary ambition that shaped his work.