The Mummy! Egypt; the 1821 public unwrappings of Egyptian mummies in a theatre near Piccadilly, which she may have attended as a girl; and, very likely, the 1818 novel by Mary Shelley, "Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus." As Shelley had written of Frankenstein's creation, "A mummy again endued with animation could not be so hideous as that wretch," which may have triggered young Miss Webb's later concept. In any case, at many points she deals in greater clarity with elements from the earlier book: the loathing for the much-desired object, the immediate arrest for crime and attempt to lie one's way out
Prometheus Unbound (Shelley) Este, requesting "The sheets of 'Prometheus Unbound,' which you will find numbered from one to twenty-six on the table of the pavilion." There is little other evidence as to when Shelley began "Prometheus Unbound" while he was living in Italy, but Shelley first mentions his progress in a letter to Thomas Love Peacock on 8 October 1818: "I have been writing – and indeed have just finished the first act of a lyrical and classical drama, to be called 'Prometheus Unbound'." Shelley stopped working on the poem following the death of his daughter Clara Everina Shelley on 24 September 1818.