Only a few 19th century literary works have become an icon in today's popular culture. Among them are the detective story and its most prominent protagonist Sherlock Holmes as well as some of the gothic horror novels, primarely Bram Stoker's Dracula and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.
On July 8 1822 the great English Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley was drowned near the Italian coast. He was one of the major English Romantic poets and is critically regarded as among the finest lyric poets in the English language. Shelley was famous for his association with John Keats and Lord Byron. And actually he was married with novelist Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, the author of the famous 'Frankenstein'.