The final week of classes came around fast for many students, and during the final week of term, many individuals involved in the university choose to embrace their final classes.
For students partaking in the year four module, The Gothic Tradition, these final weeks involved a mix of Gothic film screenings, #GothicSocks, and Mary Shelley’s Dundee – The Walking Tour.
The tour is organised by The Gothic Tradition module leader, Professor Daniel Cook, who is the Chair of English and Scottish Literature at the University of Dundee. Professor Cook’s interests lie within the literature of the 18th and 19th centuries, with a deeper focus on the Gothic genre.
On 30 March 2026, Professor Cook ran his Mary Shelley Walking Tour, which spans roughly a three-mile walking trail around Dundee’s City Centre. The tour begins at the Dalhousie building on campus and finishes near the V&A Museum.
The Frankenstein Steps
One of the most interesting stops on the tour is at South Baffin Street, where Mary Shelley spent two years of her life living in The Cottage that stood there. Professor Cook provided an insight into the history of the site: “All but an outer wall and steps of that building remain – the house and stables were long ago bulldozed to make way for the tenement buildings that stand here.
The Cottage was surrounded by woods and overlooked the Tay. Shelley later claimed her Gothic imagination was first fired by these surroundings, and you can feel that, even now. A small, understated Victorian-era plaque commemorates the stay, but much more can be done to celebrate our city’s connection to one of the world’s most influential authors.”
Visiting the site of where Shelley spent a couple of years was very powerful, as it is a building just tucked away up a small dead end road with the plaque to remember Shelley’s two year “visit” at the cottage.
Although a lot of the Dundee that exists today would not have been present during the time that Shelley spent in the city, the walk aims to showcase the kind of life that she lived day to day. Professor Cook explained:
“Walking from the Glasite Hall, the church that she and the Baxters attended, to The Cottage, for example, gives you a vivid sense of her daily life here.
“Within a short distance you have the Howff, the mound on which women were burned as witches, and plague pits, let alone the woods and river that caught her fancy.”
The walk is a fantastic way to see the routes that Shelley would have walked through during the 19th century, and it is amazing to feel the presence of her life in Dundee.
When asked about why he enjoys taking students on the walking tour, he explained, “Even students who hail from Dundee or the surrounding areas, or quite simply those who have lived here for a couple of years, have little idea this seemingly lost side of the city can be recovered.
“I love revealing that ghostly Dundee!”