You know the monster. But do you know who made him?

On a stormy night two hundred years ago, a young woman named Mary waited for inspiration. Her friend, the poet Lord Byron, had challenged her to write a scary story, but no ideas would come. Mary thought back through her life at the eerie things she had seen in her childhood and the losses she had suffered, particularly her mother, who was the type of writer Mary aspired to be. 

But nothing was as scary as her own imagination. As she drifted off to sleep, she pictured something monstrous, a creature that was so frightening, people would run from it in terror.

And when Mary awoke, she had her story.

Mary Shelley would go on to write the most enduring story of our time, one that has been scaring readers for generations. Now Lynn Fulton and Felicita Sala introduce new readers to the legend of Mary's monster.

From the dust jacket