John William Polidori
Videos
John William Polidori was an English writer and medical doctor. He is known for his associations with the Romantic movement and credited by some as the creator of the vampire genre of fantasy fiction.
Portrait by F. G. Gainsford
The Vampyre; A Tale, 1819.
Frankenstein
Videos
Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is an 1818 Gothic novel written by English author Mary Shelley. It tells the story of Victor Frankenstein, a young scientist who creates a sapient creature from
John William Polidori
…stories) and on Return to England, 1816, the journal entries beginning on 18 August 1816. Mary Shelley worked on a tale that would later evolve into Frankenstein. Byron wrote (and quickly abandoned) a fragment of a story, "A Fragment", featuring the main character Augustus Darvell, which Polidori used later as…
Title page of Vol. I, first edition, 1818
Draft of Frankenstein ("It was on a dreary night of November that I beheld my man completed ...")
An English editorial cartoonist conceives the Irish Fenian movement as akin to Frankenstein's creature, in the wake of the Phoenix Park murders in an 1882 issue of Punch.
Illustration by Theodor von Holst from the frontispiece of the 1831 edition