A fascinating but shadowy figure of Romanticism, John Polidori was the sensitive but fierce writer behind one of literature's most notorious characters--the vampyre. This short story reveals the seductive figure of evil, who continues to exert a powerful influence over popular culture and who cemented Polidori's status within the Gothic tradition. This collection also makes available many of Polidori's lesser-known and hard-to-find works, including a medical thesis on nightmares, an essay on the source of pleasures, poetry and personal diaries, and the novel Modern Oedipus. These works combine to help illuminate and deepen the reader's understanding of Romanticism and the Gothic.