Gaetano Polidori

Gaetano Polidori (* 1764 in Bien Tina, † 1853 in London) was an Italian- British writer and scholar.

Life

Gaetano was the son of Agostino Ansano Polidori ( 1714-78 ), physician and poet from Pisa. He studied law at the Università di Pisa. Shortly after he took the job of a secretary at the poet Vittorio Alfieri, where he remained four years. In 1790 he had to flee from Italy and France came over to England, where he worked as an Italian teacher. Polidori various literary works translated into Italian, especially John Milton's Paradise Lost and Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto and other writings of Milton and Lucan.

In 1793 he married the English governess Anna Maria Pierce. From the joint connecting eight children were born. His eldest son John William was a writer ( The Vampyre, 1819) as well as personal physician and traveling companion of the poet Lord Byron. His daughter Frances Mary Lavinia married the exiled Gabriele Rossetti.