" The Spectre-Barber " ( as " '' L'Amour Muet '' " ) was the first story in the French collection of German ghost stories '' Fantasmagoriana '' ( 1812 ) . This book was read by Lord Byron , Mary Shelley , Percy Bysshe Shelley , John William Polidori and Claire Clairmont at the Villa Diodati in Cologny , Switzerland during 1816 , the Year Without a Summer , and inspired them to write their own ghost stories . Lord Byron wrote a fragment of a novel that is considered the first modern vampire story , Polidori wrote '' The Vampyre '' ( 1816 ) based on this , and Mary Shelley went on to write '' Frankenstein '' ( 1818 ) ; these books went on to shape the Gothic horror genre . Maximiliaan van Woudenberg examines what influence " '' L'Amour Muet '' " had on '' Frankenstein '' , and points out the " bedside apparition " motif occurs here as well as in several other of the '' Fantasmagoriana '' stories . He also comments on the " silent love " between Franz and Meta , which is paralleled by Victor and Elizabeth , that in both cases they can not fully express their love until a quest is fulfilled , and the theme of isolation that this introduces . However , Brian Stableford notes that both '' Frankenstein '' and '' The Vampyre '' broke away from the horror-conventions of these stories . The authors attempted to get the same reaction of fear from readers , but shunned the tired motifs of lineage , family loyalty and inheritance , and instead replaced them with a highly charged and unsettling sexual subtext
Year Without a Summer
Year Without a Summer
The Spectre-Barber