ABSTRACT
Shortly before 1 June 1816, the Shelleys, together with their infant son William and Mary Shelley’s step-sister Claire Clairmont, moved to Maison Chapuis, in Montalegre, near Cologny (Hausermann, pp. 1–7). As anticipated by the Shelleys, on 10 June, Byron moved to Villa Diodati, an eight-minute walk up the hill from the Shelleys. With Byron was his physician, Dr John W. Polidori, who only a few months earlier had completed his medical degree at the University of Edinburgh at the age of nineteen and had been hired to accompany Byron on his Continental travels (S&C, vol. 4, pp. 730–1). Polidori, himself an aspiring author, had been offered £500 by the publisher John Murray for an account of his travels with Byron.
