Ghostly Tales from the Lost Summer of 1816 - Frankenstein The Vampyre & Other Stories from the Villa Diodati

<p><strong>The summer of 1816 was meant to be a holiday. It became the birthplace of modern horror.</strong></p><p>Trapped indoors by weeks of relentless rain near Lake Geneva a group of four brilliant minds: Lord Byron Percy Bysshe Shelley Mary Godwin (later Shelley) and John Polidori amused themselves by reading German ghost stories. Challenged by Byron to each write a tale of the supernatural their creative contest unlocked a darkness that would change literature forever.</p><p>This collection captures the complete chilling literary output of that legendary gathering at the Villa Diodati:</p><ul><li><p><strong><em>Frankenstein; or The Modern Prometheus</em></strong> <strong>by Mary Wollstone Shelley:</strong> The seminal masterpiece of an ambitious scientist Victor Frankenstein whose attempt to usurp the power of creation results in a tragic terrifying monster.</p></li><li><p><strong><em>The Vampyre</em></strong> <strong>by John Polidori:</strong> The first modern vampire story in English introducing the cold aristocratic and seductive Lord Ruthven--the prototype for the vampire as a sophisticated predator.</p></li><li><p><strong><em>A Fragment of a Novel</em></strong> <strong>by Lord Byron:</strong> Byron's initial unfinished prose fragment that directly inspired Polidori's <em>The Vampyre</em>.</p></li><li><p><strong><em>Fragment of a Ghost Story</em></strong> <strong>by Percy Bysshe Shelley:</strong> A tantalising haunting glimpse into the poet's own attempt at a tale of the macabre.</p></li></ul><p><strong>Explore the stories born in the shadow of a volcanic winter where a game of imagination spiraled into an obsession with life death and the monstrous ambition of man.</strong></p>