Rappaccini's Daughter

"Rappaccini's Daughter" is a Gothic short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne first published in the December 1844. It is about Giacomo Rappaccini, a medical researcher in Padua, Italy, who grows a garden of poisonous plants. He brings up his daughter to tend the plants, and she becomes resistant to the poisons, but in the process she herself becomes poisonous to others.

Nathaniel Hawthorne (July 4, 1804 - May 19, 1864) was an American novelist and short story writer, much of whose writing centered around New England, focusing on history, morality, and religion. His fiction is considered part of the Romantic movement and, more specifically, dark romanticism.