Transformation

A macabre, sinister, and supernatural tale, Mary Shelley’s Transformation is a masterpiece of Gothic writing. Having squandered his wealth, Guido returns to claim the hand of the celestial Juliet, but finds himself censured by her father. Petulant at his chastisement, his Byronic temperament gets the better of him, and he is punished with banishment. As he plots his revenge, he witnesses a mighty tempest, and from the raging sea emerges a strange figure. Initially repelled by the dwarfish form before him, the true horror soon strikes him: he and the dwarf are one. As their identities become increasingly merged, Transformation takes its place in the history of Doppelgänger literature. It appears here with two other stories by Shelley: The Mortal Immortal and The Evil Eye. Novelist and short-story writer Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley is best known for Frankenstein.