• Name: Polidori, Gaetano
• Gender: Male
• Birth Date: 1764
• Death Date: 1853
• Occupation: physician
• Occupation: writer

There are two references to Polidori in the diary in 1802 and 1829. These cannot refer to John Polidori, (1795–1821), physician and writer and the friend of Byron and Shelley as he was seven years old at the time of the earlier entry and was dead by 1829. The entries probably refer to his father the Italian writer, Gaetano Polidori (1764–1853). According to St Clair, Polidori senior helped Godwin with his Life of Chaucer - the 1802 entry includes De Ocheda, a prominent librarian and perhaps someone Godwin identified as a useful source for his research. Later, The Vampyre, a short story written by John Polidori but attributed to Byron, was published with a letter from Geneva as a preface. In it were mentioned Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley and Clair Clairmont. The piece fuelled scandalous rumours and, at Godwin's urging, Polidori senior intervened to have the offending passage withdrawn.

According to the DNB Gaetano Polidori had set up a small press where he published a range of material, including some of his own work and some of the early poetry of his grandchildren Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882) and Christina Rossetti (1830–1894). In 1828 Godwin seeks Polidori and finds him with Magnani and Rosetti (senior).

Polidori appears in the 1796 list for 1802.

• DNB
• St Clair, p. 406.

This table lists the people this person is most frequently noted with in the diary.