The Monstrous Classics Collection (Boxed Set)

Robert Louis Stevenson was born in Edinburgh in 1850, the only son of an engineer, Thomas Stevenson. Despite a lifetime of poor health, Stevenson was a keen traveller, and his first book An Inland Voyage (1878) recounted a canoe tour of France and Belgium. In 1880, he married an American divorcee, Fanny Osbourne, and there followed Stevenson's most productive period, in which he wrote, amongst other books, Treasure Island (1883), The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and Kidnapped (both 1886). In 1888, Stevenson left Britain in search of a more salubrious climate, settling in Samoa, where he died in 1894.

Bram Stoker (1847–1912) grew up in Ireland listening to his mother's tales of blood-drinking fairies and vampires rising from their graves. He later managed the Lyceum Theatre in London and worked as a civil servant, newspaper editor, reporter, and theater critic. Dracula, his best-known work, was published in 1897 and is hailed as one of the founding pieces of Gothic literature.

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.

Washington Irving Was born in New York City in 1783. He lived in the United States, England, and Spain (where he served as an American diplomatic attache). A prolific author, Irving wrote The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., Diedrich Knickerbocker's History of New York, The Alhambra, and biographies of George Washington and Christopher Columbus, among other works. He is best remembered, however, for his two most famous stories, "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and "Rip Van Winkle."

Gaston Leroux was a French journalist, short-story writer, and novelist, and is most famous for his acclaimed novel, The Phantom of the Opera. A student of law, Leroux turned to journalism after spending his inheritance on a lavish lifestyle. Over a decade of work as a court reporter and theatre critic for the L'Écho de Paris served as inspiration for his series of successful detective novels featuring Joseph Rouletabille, an amateur sleuth, and Leroux's contributions to the French detective genre are considered as significant as those of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Edgar Allan Poe. Leroux died in 1927.

Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston in 1809. His parents, both touring actors, died before he was three. He was raised by John Allan, a prosperous Virginian merchant. Poe published his first volume of poetry while still a teenager. He worked as an editor for magazines in Philadelphia, Richmond and New York, and achieved respect as a literary critic. It was only with the publication of The Raven and other Poems in 1845 that he achieved national fame as a writer. Poe died in mysterious circumstances in 1849.