Glorious Monsters / Martina Devlin

Rome, 1819. Into the sun‑struck streets of the Eternal City ar­rive the Shelleys: brilliant, volatile, and dangerously entangled.

When Irish artist Amelia Curran encounters Mary Shelley, her mercurial husband Percy, and Mary’s dazzling stepsister Claire Clairmont, she is drawn into a household shimmering with ge­nius and shadows. As Amelia becomes confidante, witness and reluctant guardian, she observes the trio’s rivalries, secrets and griefs sharpen in the heat of an Italian summer.

Haunted by the portrait of the executed noblewoman Beatrice Cenci, Amelia confronts the limits of art, loyalty and female agency while the Shelleys’ lives begin to unravel: illicit desires flare, past tragedies resurface, and the future of a child hangs in the balance. 

Layered, intimate, and steeped in historical detail, Glorious Monsters is a spellbinding re‑imagining of the Romantic circle where brilliance and ruin walk hand in hand.