John William Polidori was born in the Soho area of London in 1795. His father was Gaetano Polidori, an Italian writer and scholar who emigrated to London. His mother was an English governess named Anna Maria Pierce.
As a young boy, Polidori went to study at the Catholic Ampleforth College. Later, his father sent him to study medicine at the University of Edinburgh. He obtained his degree as a medical doctor at the age of nineteen after writing his thesis on sleepwalking.
In 1816, Polidori began working as a personal physician for the famous English romantic poet, Lord Byron. He accompanied Byron on his travels through Europe, in exile from a messy divorce and multiple accusations of...
