Dr.John William Polidori
1795 - 1821. A British novelist of Italian descent. Medical practitioner by the age of nineteen and friend of Byron, the Shelleys and Claire Claremont. His story 'The Vampyre' was the start of many things.
The circumstances surrounding the creation of Lord Ruthven are legendary. In 1816, Dr. John William Polidori accompanied the famed poet Lord Byron on a trip through Europe. In Geneva, the duo met with Percy Shelley, Mary Godwin, and Clair Clairmont where they took accommodation on the shores of Lake Leman. One night in June, after they had read aloud from Phantasmagoriana, a collection of horror tales, Byron suggested that they each write a ghost story. Mary Godwin worked on a tale that would later evolve into Frankenstein, Byron wrote (and quickly abandoned) a fragment of a story, whereas Polidori is remembered as having come up with a story about a skull-headed woman. However, Polidori had taken detailed notes during the trip, and used Byron's abandoned story as inspiration for his own tale: 'The Vampyre'!
'They entered; the light of their torches fell upon mud walls, and the thatch loaded on every individual straw with heavy flakes of soot. At the desire of Aubrey they searched for her who had attracted him by her cries; he was again left in darkness; but what was his horror, when the light of the torches once more burst upon him, to perceive the airy form of his fair conductress brought in a lifeless corpse. He shut his eyes, hoping that it was but a vision arising from his disturbed imagination; but he again saw the same form, when he unclosed them, stretched by his side. There was no colour upon her cheek, not even upon her lip; yet there was a stillness about her face that seemed almost as attaching as the life that once dwelt there: -- upon her neck and breast was blood, and upon her throat were the marks of teeth having opened the vein: -- to this the men pointed, crying, simultaneously struck with horror, "A Vampyre! a Vampyre!"'