The Monsters: Mary Shelley and the Curse of Frankenstein Book

The remarkable true story of Frankenstein's origins and the curse on its creators. On a dark and stormy night in 1816, on the shore of Lake Geneva in Switzerland, Lord Byron, famed English poet, challenged his friends to a contest--to write a ghost story. The assembled group included the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley; his lover (and future wife) Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin; Mary's stepsister Claire Claremont; and Byron's physician, John William Polidori. The famous result of that night was Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, a work that appeared in print two years later and has retained its hold on the popular imagination for almost two centuries. Less well-known was Polidori's work, the first vampire novel. It too would inspire a legend (and most directly Bram Stoker's Dracula), as well as many nightmares. And the evening begat a curse, too: Within a few years of Frankenstein's publication, nearly all of those involved met untimely deaths. THE MONSTERS tells the riveting story of the real-life characters surrounding the creation of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. It reveals not just the origins of two of the most famous monsters in popular culture, but the monstrous nature of the young people who gathered on the shore of Lake Geneva. Gripping and spooky, THE MONSTERS is unforgettable.Read More