The surname of the author of the 1819 short story The Vampyre is Polidori.
The writer was John William Polidori, an English physician and author associated with the Romantic movement. His story introduced Lord Ruthven, an elegant but predatory aristocratic vampire who helped shape the modern literary image of the vampire as a sophisticated, socially powerful figure.
The Vampyre grew out of the famous 1816 storytelling competition at the Villa Diodati near Lake Geneva, involving Lord Byron, Polidori, Mary Shelley and Percy Bysshe Shelley. Polidori developed the idea into a finished story, which was published on 1 April 1819 in The New Monthly Magazine.
The story initially appeared with the false attribution “A Tale by Lord Byron,” creating a major authorship dispute. Byron and Polidori both denied that Byron had written it. Polidori later explained that Byron supplied the groundwork but that the development belonged to him. Rymer, Le Fanu and Stoker are associated with other vampire works or traditions, not this story’s authorship.