Gaetano Polidori

Gaetano Polidori drawn in 1853 by his grandson Dante Gabriel Rossetti

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

Life

Gaetano was the son of Agostino Ansano Polidori (1714–78), doctor and poet from Pisa . He studied law at the Università di Pisa . Shortly afterwards he took up the position of secretary with the poet Vittorio Alfieri , where he stayed for four years. In 1790 he had to flee Italy and came to England via France , where he worked as an Italian teacher. Polidori translated various literary works into Italian , notably John Milton's Paradise Lost and Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto, as well as other writings by Milton and Lucan.

In 1793 he married the English governess Anna Maria Pierce. Eight children emerged from the joint relationship. His eldest son, John William, was a writer ( The Vampyre , 1819) and personal physician and travel companion of the poet Lord Byron . His daughter Frances Mary Lavinia married the exiled Gabriele Rossetti .

literature

• Oswald Doughty: Dante Gabriel Rossetti. A Victorian Romantic . University Press, London 1968 (reprinted from New Haven 1949 edition).
• Lona M. Packer: Christina Rossetti . University of California Press, Berkeley 1963.
• Ross Douglas Waller: The Rossetti Family, 1824-1854 . Scholarly Press, St. Clair Shores, Mich. 1999, ISBN 0-403-01261-9 . (Reprinted from Manchester 1932 edition).
• Paget Toynbee : Dante in English Literature from Chaucer to Cary 1380-1844 . Methuen Publ., London 1909 (2 volumes).