The Lady and Her Monsters: A Tale of Dissections, Real-Life Dr. Frankensteins, and the Creation of Mary Shelley's Masterpiece

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.

Exploring the frightful milieu in which Frankenstein was written, Roseanne Montillo recounts how Mary Shelley's Victor Frankenstein mirrored actual scientists of the period. Montillo paints a rich portrait of Shelley and her husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and their contemporaries, as well as their friend Lord Byron. Intellectually curious, they were artists, poets, and philosophers, united in captivation with the occultists and the daring scientists risking their reputations and their immortal souls to advance our understanding of human anatomy and medicine.

Juxtaposing monstrous mechanization and rising industrialism with the sublime beauty and decadence of the legendary Romantics who defined the age, Montillo takes us into a world where poets become legends in salons and boudoirs; where fame-hungry "doctors" conduct shocking performances for rabid, wide-eyed audiences; and where maniacal body snatchers secretly toil in castle dungeons.

“Enthusiatic prose... A Spirited investigation of the bizarre times that inspired Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.” - Shelf Awareness (Starred Review)

“With a flair for both drama and detail, Montillo breathes her own kind of life into the story of the men determined to discover its very elements.” - Discover Magazine

“Spills the dirt on the making of the 19th-century novel--affairs, family drama, a lake house with Lord Byron!--and paints a grimly fascinating picture of the dissections and experiments in “animal electricity” that inspired the gothic tale.” - Mental Floss

“Montillo’s book is a welcome tribute to the literary, and especially the scientific, roots of the story.” - The Commercial Dispatch

“A welcome tribute to the literary, and especially the scientific, roots of the story.” - The Lady and Her Monsters

“A haunting picture of an era in which science and the arts overlapped, a perfect storm in which inspiration for “Frankenstein” could strike. Like a bolt of lightning.” - Washington Post

“Her narrative… rattles enjoyably through a lurid and restless landscape. … Equally a literary and a scientific endeavor.” - Wall Street Journal

“A delicious and enticing journey into the origins of a masterpiece.” - Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Montillo achieves a freshness through her lively narrative approach and a fascination with long-ago science and its ethics that sparks across the pages.” - New York Times Book Review

“Montillo never loses sight of the fact that it was Mary Shelley’s imagination that sewed the pieces together - and provided the vital spark that keeps the tale alive nearly two centuries on.” - New Scientist