Adroitly exploiting the classic elements of popular Gothic horror, Shelley created a dramatic tale of romance and revenge. This short and intensely emotional novel—first published when Shelley was only eighteen—combines adolescent vigour and literary panache with occasional sparks of true poetic genius. Shelley's vivid love story dramatises the misplaced passion between Matilda, Contessa di Laurentinini, Verezzi, the object of her crazed desire, and Matilda's murderous accomplice, the mysterious Zastrozzi. When Matilda discovers that her love is unrequited, she traps Verezzi in her castle and orders Zastrozzi to kill Julia—the woman Verezzi loves. But Zastrozzi has his own agenda ... A quintessential novel of 'sensibility,' Zastrozzi reveals the youthful Shelley's innate creative flair.
Author
Percy Bysshe Shelley was one of the major English Romantic poets and is widely considered to be among the finest lyric poets of the English language. He is perhaps most famous for such anthology pieces as Ozymandias, Ode to the West Wind, To a Skylark, and The Masque of Anarchy. However, his major works were long visionary poems including Alastor, Adonais, The Revolt of Islam, Prometheus Unbound and the unfinished The Triumph of Life. Shelley's unconventional life and uncompromising idealism, combined with his strong skeptical voice, made him a authoritative and much denigrated figure during his life. He became the idol of the next two or three generations of poets, including the major Victorian and Pre-Raphaelite poets Robert Browning, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Algernon Charles Swinburne, as well as William Butler Yeats and poets in other languages such as Jibanananda Das and Subramanya Bharathy. He was also admired by Karl Marx, Henry Stephens Salt, and Bertrand Russell. Famous for his association with his contemporaries John Keats and Lord Byron, he was also married to novelist Mary Shelley.
