The Lady and Her Monsters by Roseanne Motillo brings to life the fascinating times, startling science, and real-life horrors behind Mary Shelley’s gothic masterpiece, Frankenstein.

Montillo recounts how—at the intersection of the Romantic Age and the Industrial Revolution—Shelley’s Victor Frankenstein was inspired by actual scientists of the period: curious and daring iconoclasts who were obsessed with the inner workings of the human body and how it might be reanimated after death.

With true-life tales of grave robbers, ghoulish experiments, and the ultimate in macabre research—human reanimation—The Lady and Her Monsters is a brilliant exploration of the creation of Frankenstein, Mary Shelley’s horror classic.

The story of Frankenstein didn’t begin with Mary Shelley. It began in the dissecting rooms and graveyards of Europe, with the real-life scientists who blurred the line between life and death.

• The Real Dr. Frankensteins: Meet Luigi Galvani and Giovanni Aldini, the daring Italian scientists whose ghoulish experiments in “animal electricity” and human reanimation directly inspired the character of Victor Frankenstein.
• A History of Science: Explore the fertile intersection of the Romantic Age and the Industrial Revolution, a time when scientific ambition, forbidden knowledge, and macabre research captured the public imagination.
• The Resurrection Men: Uncover the shocking true crime history of the “resurrection men,” the professional body snatchers who supplied anatomists with fresh corpses and fueled the dark world of nineteenth-century medical science.
• The Making of a Masterpiece: Trace the biographical and scientific influences—from public dissections to scandalous experiments—that converged in Mary Shelley’s mind to create one of the most iconic horror stories of all time.