Mary Shelley provides a detailed study of the famous author's extensive contribution to the Gothic genre. Angela Wright examines the key novels alongside the short stories, revealing how the Gothic themes and motifs that energised Frankenstein resurface in some of Shelley's later works.

This volume offers a comprehensive account of the Gothic in Western civilisation, from the Gothic sacking of Rome in 410 AD, through seventeenth-century Gothic politics, and up to the end of the long eighteenth century. Interdisciplinary in its focus, it includes essays on literature, architecture, politics and fine art.