John William Polidori

John William Polidori (1795–1821) was Lord Byron’s young physician, present at the Villa Diodati in 1816 when the ghost-story challenge also produced Frankenstein. From it he wrote ‘The Vampyre’ (1819), whose aristocratic Lord Ruthven established the suave, predatory vampire of literature, the direct ancestor of Dracula and every count who followed. A single, epoch-making contribution to the fantastic.