- The Stress of Her Regard
infobox Book |
name = The Stress of Her Regard
image_caption =
author =Tim Powers
cover_artist =
country =United States
language = English
genre =Fantasy novel / horror
publisher =Ace Books (Hardcover edition)
release_date = September 1989
media_type = Print (Hardback &Paperback )
pages = 392 pp (Hardcover edition)
isbn = ISBN 0-441-79055-0 (Hardcover edition)"The Stress of Her Regard" is a 1989 horror/
fantasy novel byTim Powers . It won a 1990World Fantasy Award ,Mythopoeic Award , andLocus Poll Award . As with many Powers novels, it proposes asecret history in which real events have supernatural causes: in this case, the lives of famous English Romantic writers—as well as political events in central Europe during the early 19th century—are largely determined by a race of proteanvampire -like creatures.Drawing from European and Middle Eastern mythology, Powers depicts these beings as having qualities of vampires, succubi, incubi, Lamia, fairies, and jinn. Not only predators but sometimes benefactors of humans, they are the basis for the
Muses and theGraeae .Real people, events, and literary works figuring in the novel include:
*George Gordon, Lord Byron and his involvement in theCarbonari
*Percy Bysshe Shelley
*Mary Shelley , her novel "Frankenstein ", and her stepsisterClaire Clairmont
*John Keats and his poem "Lamia"
*John Polidori (Powers does not mention his influential story "The Vampyre " at all, possibly a deliberate and ironic omission given Polidori's fate in the novel)
*Leigh Hunt
*François Villon References
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