A group of English friends were staying at the Villa for the summer. The line up included the rock star poet of the age Lord Byron (28), his personal physician John Polidori, poet Percy Shelley (23), his mistress Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (18) and their four-month-old son William plus Mary’s step-sister Clare Clairmont (eight months younger than Mary and Byron's mistress). However it wasn't the blissful summer retreat they had hoped as the group found themselves trapped in the house for days due to bad weather.
Mary Shelley wrote of their stay: “it proved a wet, ungenial summer, and incessant rain often confined us for days to the house. Some volumes of ghost stories translated from the German into French, fell into our hands.” This gave rise to an idea. “’We will each write a ghost story’ said Lord Byron; and his proposition was acceded to". Over the next few weeks she went on to write ‘Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus’.
It remains a classic today and it's been argued it's the first true work of science fiction - possibly being inspired by a real doctor's experiments. Interestingly, two years later when she published, she withheld her name, preferring instead to publish it anonymously. But this meant she didn’t have any copyright protection, so lots of people were republishing it or making it into plays and she wasn’t getting any money. In 1820 she added her name to the book.
It's not just her novel that's worth a read, Mary Shelly is also a rather interesting character and well worth finding out more about.
Find out more:Read ‘Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus’ by Mary Shelly
Spark Notes for Frankenstein
‘Your Dead to Me’ BBC Podcast – Mary Shelley episode.
Read Romantic Outlaws: The extraordinary lives of Mary Wollstonecraft & Mary Shelly by Charlotte Gordon
