‘There’s more than one kind of beauty, just as there’s more than one kind of love.’ He pauses. ‘And in this community we’re building, we know that love divided is not love lessened.’Rome, 1819. Into the sun-drenched streets of the Eternal City arrive the Shelleys: dazzling, volatile and dangerously entangled. Irish artist Amelia Curran encounters Mary Shelley, her mercurial husband Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Mary’s stepsister Claire Clairmont – and is drawn into a world shimmering with genius. But shadows lie behind the glamour. And Amelia becomes reluctant witness to the trio’s rivalries, griefs and secrets, which sharpen in the heat of an Italian summer. Haunted by the portrait of executed noblewoman Beatrice Cenci, Amelia confronts the limits of art, loyalty and female agency. Meanwhile, the Shelleys’ lives unravel as illicit desires flare, past tragedies resurface and a child’s life hangs in the balance. Layered, intimate and steeped in historical context, Glorious Monsters is a spellbinding reimagining of the Romantic circle – where brilliance and ruin are inextricably linked.
