A Dark and Stormy Night

Book excerpt: 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 challenge 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.