A Dark and Stormy Night

By Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

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. With a Foreword by Julian T. Reid and Berl A. Boykin.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wilder Publications
• Release date: Jun 15, 2014
• ISBN: 9781633840003

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin was born in 1797, the daughter of two of the leading radical writers of the age. Her mother died just days after her birth and she was educated at home by her father and encouraged in literary pursuits. She eloped with and subsequently married the Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, but their life together was full of hardship. The couple were ruined by disapproving parents and Mary lost three of her four children. Although its subject matter was extremely dark, her first novel Frankenstein (1818) was an instant sensation. Subsequent works such as Mathilda (1819), Valperga (1823) and The Last Man (1826) were less successful but are now finally receiving the critical acclaim that they deserve.