Dear Reader,
With Halloween just around the corner, spooky stories are filling our bookshelves and screens. But sometimes, real-life literary history is far stranger—and more hauntingly romantic—than any fiction we could write!
Did you know that Mary Shelley, the iconic mind behind Frankenstein, kept one of the most unusual and chilling keepsakes hidden in her writing desk?
After her husband, the Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, tragically drowned off the coast of Italy in 1822, his body was cremated on the beach according to Italian quarantine law. However, as the story goes, his heart refused to burn. It was retrieved from the ashes, wrapped in silk, and given to Mary.
Rather than burying it, Mary carried the dried heart with her for the rest of her life. She kept it neatly wrapped inside the pages of Percy’s poem Adonaïs, tucked away in the drawer of her portable writing desk—the very desk where she penned some of her most famous works.
It wasn't until after her death in 1851 that her family discovered the silk-wrapped heart tucked among her papers during a cleanup of her study.
Talk about taking a devotion to love and literature to the absolute limit!
As writers and readers, we often leave pieces of our hearts on the page. But Mary Shelley took that sentiment quite literally.
Do you have any favorite obscure literary facts or gothic historical oddities? Reply to this email and share your favorite spooky tales!
