The date is June 18th 1816; the venue is the Villa Diodati beside Lake Geneva and the dramatic Jura mountain range. Byron’s guests are his secretary Dr Polidori and Percy Bysshe and Mary Shelley. Outside, the rain is beating down and thunder and lightning flash across the lake from the mountains. Inside, each of the four tries to intensify the gothic atmosphere by telling a ghost story. Mary’s creation is ‘Frankenstein’ - which was to be the most enduring result of that stormy night. This talk explores the artistic origins of the Gothic revival and the fascination with vampires, monsters and other horrors which found their expression in those stories.

This talk explores the artistic origins of the Gothic revival and the fascination with vampires, monsters and other horrors which found their expression in those stories. We look at some of the weird, supernatural and fantastic subjects pictured by a range of artists including Fuseli, Blake, Wright of Derby and others, and at some depictions of Prometheus to explain Mary Shelley’s subtitle to Frankenstein: ‘The Modern Prometheus.’