| Method | Lithograph with tint stone |
| Artist | J.Jaccottet |
| Published | Imp Lemercier, r.Seine 57, Paris., c. 1850 |
| Dimensions | Image 121 x 167 mm, Sheet 157 x 205 mm |
| Notes |
A view of the Hôtel Byron at Villeneuve on Lake Geneva. The hotel opened in 1841, the first to be opened in Villeneuve. It's name is a reference to the Romantic poet, Lord Byron, who spent a season at the Villa Diodati on Lake Geneva with Percy and Mary Shelley, his physician John Polidori, and his former lover Claire Clairmont. Their stay proved to be a watershed moment for gothic Romantic literature. Byron's suggestion that each member of their party pen a ghost-story was the genesis of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Polidori's The Vampyre, the latter based in part on an abandoned short-story Byron himself had written. Byron's notoriety and fame followed him to Lake Geneva, where curious gossips gathered to spy on the poets, in the hope of catching some indication of the debaucheries that were widely reputed to be occurring within the Villa Diodati. The choice of Byron's name for the hotel was a deliberate ploy to capture the attention of tourists undertaking pilgrimage to this site following his and Shelley's deaths. |
| Framing | unmounted |
| Price | £40.00 |
| Stock ID | 33632 |