Portrait of Henry Polidori

Henry Polidori (or Polydore, as he anglicised it) was one of the eight children, four sons and four daughters, of Gaetano Polidori, a teacher of Italian in London and the son of a doctor. One of Henry's sisters, Frances, married Gabriele Rossetti, an Italian political refugee and Dante scholar, in 1826, and thus became the mother of Dante Gabriel, Christina and William Michael Rossetti.

Virginia Surtees reads the date as 1855.