My interest in Beatrice Cenci began when I was writing my dissertation almost two decades ago. I saw a connection between Nastasia Filippovna's portrait in Dostoevsky's "The Idiot" and the so-called portrait of Beatrice Cenci supposedly by Guido Reni. This began my search for all the literary uses of the Beatrice Cenci (BC) portrait in European and American literature, and the reading of a slew of articles and books on BC and/or her portrait. A perusal of the author's sources told me that I was familiar with all her literary and critical/historical sources (and that there were several works and sources she did NOT reference that should have been for such a study.) It turns out that this book is hardly about the famous painting, or even all that much about Beatrice Cenci, though the reader will get to marvel at her horrible history. This book consists of a series of authors' biographies all linked by the fact that they each wrote about or referenced Beatrice Cenci in their work. BC becomes a kind of symbol of each of the studied author's moral ambiguities. Each work either about or referencing BC reflects the author's own psychological and emotional secrets. Thus, BC's "spell" is rather a recognition by the author of a particular work of his own dark sensibilities. I find this kind of literary criticism rather unfullfilling and old-fashioned. I don't read works of literature to find out about the author's psychology or personal life, rather I read author's biographies to discover more about the literature. I don't think this book shed much light on the literary use of BC or her portrait, though it did make me want to read more about Shelley and his unusual, for the time, menage a trois. ( )