Summer 1816. A house party on the shores of Lake Geneva. Eighteen-year-old Mary and her husband Percy Bysshe Shelley, along with Mary's half-sister Claire and the infamous Lord Byron, take part in a challenge to see who can write the most horrifying story. Mary's contribution is to become one of the most celebrated Gothic novels of all time.In Blood and Ice, first staged in 1982 and revived several times since, Liz Lochhead tells the story of Frankenstein's creation as if set in a ghostly nursery. Using flashbacks and the rich poetic language for which she has become admired, Lochhead weaves a spider's web of connections between Mary's own tragic life and that of her literary monster.