A Dark and Stormy Night
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It was a dark and stormy night. Lord Byron, Mary Godwin (who would soon become Mary Shelley), Percy Bysshe Shelley, and John William Polidori were sheltering inside a Swiss castle reading ghost stories to one another to pass the time. Noting that everyone present had literary aspirations Byron challenged the assembly to each write a ghost story. This night was perhaps the most important literary night in history as both science fiction and vampire literature were birthed. Collected here for the first time are the four works produces as a result of that contest "Fragment Of A Ghost Story" by Percy Bysshe Shelley, "The Vampyre" by John William Polidori, "Fragment of a Novel" By Lord Byron, and of course, Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley.
Mary Shelley
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was born on August 30, 1797, into a life of personal tragedy. In 1816, she married the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, and that summer traveled with him and a host of other Romantic intellectuals to Geneva. Her greatest achievement was piecing together one of the most terrifying and renowned stories of all time: Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. Shelley said she conceived of Frankenstein in “a waking dream.” This vision was simply of a student kneeling before a corpse brought to life. Yet this tale of a mad creator and his abomination has inspired a multitude of storytellers and artists. She died on February 1, 1851.
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