The weather went from being beautiful to tempestuous: torrential thunderstorms plagued the Shelleys, Byron and Polidori. The weather -- along with the company and the eerie ambiance of the locale -- contributed to the genesis of _Frankenstein, _ Polidori's "The Vampyre," and, in all likelihood, modern weird fiction. On the night of June 16th, the group read aloud a collection of German ghost stories, The Fantasmagoriana. This inspired Byron to challenge the group to write a ghost story. Shelley wrote an forgettable story; Byron wrote a story fragment; and Polidori began the "The Vampyre,"...
The weather went from being beautiful to tempestuous: torrential thunderstorms plagued the Shelleys, Byron and Polidori. The weather -- along with ...
James Robinson Planche was one of the most prolific and successful of nineteenth-century playwrights. In a career spanning fifty years he wrote over one hundred and eighty pieces of all types, from pantomime and farce to melodrama and opera, for production at a wide range of London theatres. This book offers a representative selection of his most popular plays. It includes one melodrama - The Vampire; or The Bride of the Isles (1820), which represents the first treatment of the vampire theme on the English stage; one farce - The Garrick Fever (1839); three 'fairy' extravaganzas - Beauty and...
James Robinson Planche was one of the most prolific and successful of nineteenth-century playwrights. In a career spanning fifty years he wrote over o...
