Often critically neglected as a piece of Shelley's juvenilia, Zastrossi was composed between the March and late August of 1809. Arguably one of Shelley's earliest surviving works of prose fiction (aside from St. Irvyne, or The Rosicrucian 1811 [See Separate Entry] and his abandoned The Assassins 1814), Zastrossi marks his first major creative venture into the domain of Gothic-romance. The London publishers J. Wilkie and G. Robinson issued Shelley's tale of Gothic horror in the following spring of 1810. The plot, subject, and style of Zastrossi are indebted to Shelley's avid reading, during in his time at Eton, of popular and sensationalist fiction. In composing Zastrossi, Shelley relied heavily on Gothic conventions of narration and characterisation prevalent in such popular works as Anne Radcliffe's The Italian (1797), Matthew G. Lewis's The Monk (1796), and Charlotte...
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Citation: Sandy, Mark. "Zastrossi". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 20 September 2002 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=8926, accessed 09 June 2026.]
