'There's more than one kind of beauty, just as there's more than one kind of love.' He pauses. 'And in this community we're building, we know that love divided is not love lessened.'





Rome, 1819. Into the sun-drenched streets of the Eternal City arrive the Shelleys: dazzling, volatile and dangerously entangled. Irish artist Amelia Curran encounters Mary Shelley, her mercurial husband Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Mary's stepsister Claire Clairmont – and is drawn into a world shimmering with genius. But shadows lie behind the glamour. And Amelia becomes reluctant witness to the trio's rivalries, griefs and secrets, which sharpen in the heat of an Italian summer.

Haunted by the portrait of executed noblewoman Beatrice Cenci, Amelia confronts the limits of art, loyalty and female agency. Meanwhile, the Shelleys' lives unravel as illicit desires flare, past tragedies resurface and a child's life hangs in the balance. Layered, intimate and steeped in historical context, Glorious Monsters is a spellbinding reimagining of the Romantic circle – where brilliance and ruin are inextricably linked.



Martina Devlin is a bestselling author and award-winning journalist. Devlin has won numerous awards for both her writing and journalism. She has been shortlisted three times for the Irish Book of the Year awards. She writes weekly current affairs columns for the Irish Independent and has been named National Newspapers of Ireland columnist of the year. She frequently chairs literary and current affairs events and is a regular commentator on BBC and RTÉ. She was born in Omagh and lives in Dublin.



This view into the complicated lives and artistic jealousies of the Shelleys during a summer in Rome is beautifully evoked and utterly convincing. The glamour and excitement, the complex histories, the sorrows, the insights - into the lives of women and the meaning of art - are all handled with subtlety and skill.

Martina Devlin is a fabulously gifted writer, and Glorious Monsters is a captivating novel.