The Wordsworth Grasmere museum in the Lake District of England has announced a major new exhibition exploring the origins of the Gothic imagination.
Ghost Story! Into the Gothic Imagination, the new immersive exhibition, will bring together rare books and items from the museum's collection to explore the Gothic literary movement.
Opening on 7 July, the exhibition will immerse visitors in the world of Gothic fiction through installations, stories of terror and wonder, and themes that continue to influence popular culture.
'Ghost Story! Into the Gothic Imagination' display at the Wordsworth Grasmere museum in England's Lake District.
The exhibition begins in the summer of 1816, when Mary Shelley conceived Frankenstein during a ghost story challenge at Villa Diodati in Switzerland, alongside Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Claire Clairmont and John Polidori.
Per a press release, the exhibition starts in the reimagined bedroom of Mary Shelley at the Villa Diodati, where visitors are then "drawn into an immersive Gothic landscape of moonlit forests, crumbling ruins and haunting seas".
Guests will journey through immersive Gothic settings inspired by the works of writers including William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
Exhibition highlights include a rare first edition of Frankenstein, published in 1818, alongside a first edition of John Polidori’s 1819 novella The Vampyre.
A rare first edition of 'Frankenstein', published in 1818.
Also on display are Lord Byron’s personal snuff box, later owned by actor Henry Irving, whose appearance is believed to have inspired Dracula, as well as the earliest surviving manuscript of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Gothic poem Christabel.
Rare illustrations from Coleridge's poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner are also on display, including Mervyn Peake’s depiction of 'Nightmare-Life-in-Death', which was removed from the 1943 edition after the publisher deemed it too frightening.
A programme of events will accompany the exhibition, including a costumed recreation of the famous ghost story competition, evening storytelling sessions, creative workshops, and museum lates.
Ghost Story! Into the Gothic Imagination opens at the Wordsworth Grasmere on 7 July and runs until 19 June 2027.
Images courtesy of the Wordsworth Grasmere/Caroline Robinson
