The Evening Frankenstein Was Born

This was the kind of weather that made you rather stay inside. It was cold, grey and there was a gloomy atmosphere around Lake Geneva.

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Inside the large Villa Diodati, however, there was a group of people who normally would have had no problem finding something to do.

There was the famous poet Lord Byron.

His friend and poet Percy Bysshe Shelley.

Percy's young partner Mary Godwin.

Her stepsister Claire Clairmont.

And Byron's young doctor John Polidori.

They were young, educated, a little eccentric, used to good company and definitely not bored with life.

But that summer of 1816 they had a problem.

The weather had ruined their plans.

So one evening they sat inside, talked, read German ghost stories and tried to think what to do next.

None of them could know that this rather annoying summer holiday would change their lives.

And that two centuries later, almost everybody in the world would know the name of one of them.

Mary Godwin had an idea during those days.

And from that idea Frankenstein was born.

The Summer That Went Completely Wrong

The year 1816 was a strange one.

Europe experienced unusual weather and the summer was nothing like people expected.

The reason was the enormous eruption of Mount Tambora in modern-day Indonesia in 1815. Huge amounts of volcanic material entered the atmosphere and the year 1816 later became known as the “Year Without a Summer”.

Temperatures were unusually low and the weather in Europe was cold and rainy.

And it was in these conditions that this group of young people arrived at Lake Geneva.

Mary Godwin was not yet known as Mary Shelley.

She was eighteen years old.

She was the daughter of the famous philosopher William Godwin and the writer Mary Wollstonecraft, who had already died.

Even her family background was unusual.

Her mother died shortly after Mary was born, and Mary grew up surrounded by books, political discussions, philosophy and literature.

And then she met Percy Bysshe Shelley.

Percy was a poet.

He was also married.

Despite this, he ran away abroad with Mary.

Their relationship caused a scandal and their life was definitely not a respectable and quiet one.

In the summer of 1816, Mary's stepsister Claire Clairmont joined them.

Claire had her own reason for wanting to get close to Byron.

And this is where another part of the story begins.

Lord Byron Arrives at the Lake

George Gordon Byron, known as Lord Byron, was a huge literary star at that time.

He was not only a poet.

He was a celebrity.

People followed his life, his romantic relationships, his scandals and his travels.

Byron had a reputation as a man who could attract attention almost everywhere he went.

In 1816, he left Britain and travelled to Europe.

Eventually he settled near Lake Geneva, at Villa Diodati.

And he was not alone.

A young doctor named John Polidori was with him.

Polidori was clever, ambitious and wanted to become a writer.

Byron hired him as his personal doctor.

Their relationship was not completely simple, though.

Polidori was a young man trying to make his name, while Byron was already a famous personality.

Next to Byron, Polidori could easily look like someone less important.

And yet it was him who would later write a story which strongly influenced the modern image of the vampire.

But nobody knew that yet.

At that time, they were simply a group of people trying somehow to survive a cold and rainy summer.

And Then Came That Evening

Imagine their company.

A big house.

Lake Geneva outside the windows.

Rain.

Darkness.

Books.

A fire.

People who had plenty of time and not many possibilities how to spend it.

It was in these circumstances that they started reading German ghost stories.

It was a collection known as Fantasmagoriana.

Stories about ghosts, spirits and supernatural events.

And the weather outside made the atmosphere almost perfect.

It was not some planned literary conference.

It was not a historical moment that somebody carefully wrote down.

It was simply entertainment between friends.

And then Byron had an idea.

Each of them should write their own ghost story.

Something frightening.

Something that would surprise the others.

From today's point of view, it is almost unbelievable.

Because if someone had told them:

“Within a few years, this will become one of the most famous horror stories ever written,”

they probably would have laughed.

Mary Could Not Think of Anything

The others started thinking.

Mary could not come up with any good idea.

And this is maybe one of the nicest things about the whole story.

The future author of Frankenstein did not sit down on the first evening with a brilliant story already in her head about a scientist who creates a living creature.

Quite the opposite.

According to her later description, she had trouble thinking of something.

Maybe that is exactly why the idea affected her so strongly.

Around her, people were talking about ghosts, death and the supernatural.

Percy Shelley was interested in science and philosophy.

Byron discussed all kinds of strange subjects.

John Polidori was a doctor and knew the human body.

And Mary had her own experience with death.

Her mother had died when Mary was born.

Mary had also lost a small child shortly before the stay in Geneva.

So the subject of life and death was not abstract for her.

It was painfully real.

Then She Saw an Image

One night, Mary finally managed to fall asleep.

And then she had a dream.

Later she described the image which inspired her.

She saw a young scientist working on something frightening.

She saw a dead human body which started moving because of his work.

And suddenly there was a person standing in front of her who had received life, but whose existence was anything but happy.

It was not a classic story about an evil monster.

And that was exactly what made it so powerful.

Mary started thinking about a scientist who tried to cross the border between life and death.

About a man who creates something.

And then becomes frightened by what he has created.

The first idea may have been only a short image.

But Mary held onto it.

She started writing.

And slowly, the story of Victor Frankenstein began to appear.

But Mary Was Not the Only One

Meanwhile, something interesting was happening at Villa Diodati.

John Polidori also started writing.

And his story was supposed to be inspired by Byron.

Polidori created the character of a mysterious aristocrat called Lord Ruthven.

He was handsome.

Rich.

Charming.

Dangerous.

And not completely human.

Polidori's The Vampyre was published in 1819 and became an important work in the history of vampire literature.

His story helped create the image of the vampire as an elegant, aristocratic seducer.

And this is important.

Because the modern image of the vampire is not only Dracula.

There is something of Polidori's Ruthven in it.

An elegant man.

Mysterious.

Dangerous.

Attractive.

And this image later influenced a lot of vampire literature.

Byron Never Finished His Story

And what about Byron himself?

He also tried to create a ghost story.

But he never finished it.

Still, his role in the whole story remained important.

It was his idea of telling ghost stories which created the atmosphere in which Mary began to work on her own idea.

It is fascinating how little is sometimes needed.

Nobody had to do anything great.

Nobody had to change the world with one decision.

It was enough that several people sat inside one house during a cold summer and looked for something to entertain themselves.

And Then Frankenstein Began to Be Born

Mary kept returning to her story.

What had originally started as a scary story for one evening began turning into something much bigger.

Percy Shelley helped her with editing the text.

Mary wrote.

Rewrote.

Added more.

The story slowly became a novel.

And it raised a question which is still surprisingly modern today:

What happens when a human being gets the ability to create life, but does not think at all about the responsibility which comes with it?

Victor Frankenstein is not simply an evil man.

He is obsessed with knowledge.

He wants to prove something nobody before him has been able to prove.

He wants to cross a border.

And when he succeeds, he discovers that perhaps some borders exist for a reason.

That is what made the story different from an ordinary scary tale.

No Simple Happy End

Mary finished Frankenstein.

The first edition was published in London on January 1, 1818.

The book was published anonymously.

Mary was only twenty years old.

The title page listed an anonymous author.

Later, of course, people discovered who was really behind the book.

And the novel became one of the most important works of Gothic literature.

Mary Shelley became a permanent part of literary history.

But her own life was much more complicated than the story she had written.

After that summer in Geneva came another series of tragedies.

Her life was marked by the deaths of her children, the death of her husband Percy Shelley, financial problems and social pressure.

Still, she continued writing.

And that is why it is so interesting today to return not only to Frankenstein, but also to that strange summer.

Because Frankenstein Was Not Born in Peace

Today we can imagine Mary Shelley as a famous writer.

But at that time she was very young.

She was pregnant or had just gone through difficult events in her life, she was surrounded by people who were eccentric and often involved in social scandals, and she lived a life which was far away from a comfortable middle-class existence.

And yet, in the middle of all this chaos, a story was born which survived almost everybody who had been in that room.

And What About the Others?

It is even more interesting to look at what happened to the people who were sitting together that summer.

Lord Byron died in Greece in 1824, at only 36 years old.

Percy Bysshe Shelley died two years earlier, in 1822, when his boat was caught in a storm while he was sailing in Italy.

John Polidori died in 1821. He was only 25.

Claire Clairmont lived much longer, but her life was also marked by relationships, losses and social scandals.

And Mary?

She survived them all.

She became a widow.

She took care of her only surviving son.

She continued her literary work.

And slowly, she became one of the most important female writers of the 19th century.

And yet the whole thing basically started with boredom.

One Evening. Several Lives. And Stories That Survived Them All

When we hear the word Frankenstein today, very few people imagine a cold evening beside Lake Geneva.

Mary Shelley probably did not realize that night that she was opening a door to a literary world she would never leave.

She did not know that one day her creation would be known even by children who had never read her book.

She did not know that Frankenstein would have hundreds of film versions.

She did not know that literary scholars, filmmakers and scientists would study her story.

She did not even know that one day her name would become more famous than the names of many of the men who surrounded her that summer.

She only knew that she had an idea.

And so she started writing it.

Maybe this is exactly why the story of Villa Diodati is so beautiful.

Because it did not begin with some great historical event.

It began with an ordinary evening when several people did not feel like going to sleep and the weather outside was terrible.

And from such an evening came two stories which still have not died.

One about a man who created life.

And the other about a man who fed on life.

Sources

• Smithsonian Magazine – Blast from the Past – the circumstances of the summer of 1816, Byron, the Shelleys and their friends at Lake Geneva, and the creation of Frankenstein and The Vampyre.

• Smithsonian Magazine – The Real-Life Places That Inspired Frankenstein – Villa Diodati, Geneva, 1816, and the influence of the unusual weather on the creation of the novel.

• Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford – Timeline of Mary Shelley’s Life – timeline of Mary Shelley’s life and the creation of Frankenstein during her stay in Switzerland in June 1816.

• British Library – Frankenstein manuscripts – surviving Frankenstein manuscripts from 1816–1817 and information about the creation of the text.

• British Library – Byron and his circle – archival material relating to Byron, Mary Shelley and their circle.