1. Gaetano Fedele Polidori was an Italian writer and scholar, of Greek descent, living in Highgate.
11 Facts About Gaetano Polidori
1. 2.
Gaetano Polidori was the son of Agostino Ansano Polidori, a physician and poet who lived and practised in his native Bientina, near Pisa, Tuscany.
3.
Gaetano Polidori became secretary to the tragedian Vittorio Alfieri in 1785 and remained with him four years.
4.
Gaetano Polidori came to England from Paris in 1790 after resigning as Alfieri's secretary.
5.
Gaetano Polidori settled in Highgate, working as an Italian teacher and translator.
6.
Gaetano Polidori translated various literary works, notably, John Milton's Paradise Lost and Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto, besides other writings of Milton and Lucan.
7.
Gaetano Polidori wrote prolifically, producing his own fiction, poetry, criticism, and tragedies.
8.
Gaetano Polidori set up a private press at his home, where amongst other works, he printed the first editions of some poems by his grandchildren, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Christina Rossetti.
9.
Gaetano Polidori printed an edition of the poem Osteologia, which his father Agostino Ansano Polidori had written in 1763.
10.
Gaetano Polidori retired to a house in Holmer Green, Buckinghamshire in 1836.
11.
Gaetano Polidori's oldest son John William Polidori was a physician to Lord Byron and author of the first vampire story in English, The Vampyre.