The Gothic aesthetic gained literary prominence in ... and decay. Writers like Mary Shelley (Frankenstein), Edgar Allan Poe, and Bram Stoker (Dracula) further enriched the genre, intertwining ...

From a volcano in Indonesia to a frog in Bologna, a ghoulishly large number of ideas and events wormed into Mary Shelley's dazzling mind as she imagined the "hideous phantasm of a man" at the ...