Wordsworth Grasmere to host immersive gothic exhibition

Wordsworth Grasmere will host 'Ghost Story! Into the Gothic Imagination', opening on July 7, 2026, and running until June 19, 2027.

The exhibition delves into the origins of gothic fiction and the literary experiments that shaped the genre, displaying rare books and manuscripts from the museum’s collection, including a first edition of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

A first edition of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818) will be on display (Image: Wordsworth Grasmere)

The exhibition begins with a recreation of Mary Shelley’s bedroom at the Villa Diodati on the shore of Lake Geneva in Switzerland, where she, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron, John Polidori, and Claire Clairmont spent the rain-soaked summer of 1816.

Challenged by Byron to write a ghost story, Mary Shelley conceived the vision that would become Frankenstein.

That same contest produced Byron’s A Fragment and Polidori’s The Vampyre, both of which shaped the vampire archetype in literature and paved the way for Dracula.

The exhibition opens July 7 and will run until June 19, 2027 (Image: Wordsworth Grasmere)

Visitors will journey through a gothic landscape filled with moonlit forests, crumbling ruins, and haunted seas, reflecting the themes that inspired not only Shelley, but also William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Among the rare items on display is an 1818 first edition of Frankenstein and a first edition of The Vampyre (1819), the novella credited with popularising the aristocratic vampire.

Also featured is Lord Byron’s personal snuff box, later owned by actor Henry Irving, whose striking appearance is believed to have inspired Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

The earliest surviving manuscript of Coleridge’s gothic poem Christabel, copied at Dove Cottage by Dorothy Wordsworth and Mary Hutchinson, is also on view.

The exhibition takes visitors back to the summer of 1816 where Mary Shelley, Lord Byron and John Polidori conceived the novels that would shape the literary genre (Image: Caroline Robinson)

Other highlights include rarely seen illustrations for The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, including Mervyn Peake’s haunting depiction of the ‘Nightmare-Life-in-Death,’ originally removed from the 1943 edition because the publisher deemed it too frightening.

The exhibition is designed by Cumbria and London-based production designer May Davies and features shadowy environments and gothic installations.

There will also be creative workshops, museum lates, and the chance to explore rarely seen items from the Wordsworth Grasmere archives.

Tickets to Wordsworth Grasmere are valid for 12 months and cost £16 for adults and £8 for children.

They are available to book via wordsworth.org.uk.