Can life from death be re-created; Could a corpse be re-animated? Some believed so. What if monsters roamed the Earth. What if Man could be God. Mary Shelley imagined such, in her nightmares and in her dreams.

Mary Shelley

By 1816, Mary Godwin, who was born on 30 August, 1797, the daughter of the radical philosopher William Godwin and the proto-feminist Mary Wollstencraft who had authored the first feminist book, “The Vindication of the Rights of Woman”, and had died soon after giving birth, had eloped with her lover the poet Percy Byssche Shelley. Her father, who had been a keen advocate of ‘free love’ had shown himself to be not so keen when it came to his own daughter, and had effectively ostracised her. This had shocked Mary, a young woman already haunted by the thought that she had caused the death of her mother, but she was very much in love and besotted with the libertine Shelley and resisted his attempts to share her with his friends. She had already lost one child and was pregnant with his second when they decided to escape the harassments of home (Shelley was, after all, married) and travel to the Continent.

The year 1816, became known as “the year without summer.” The eruption of Mount Tambora in the Dutch East Indies, the largest eruption for a thousand years, had deposited huge amounts of dense, black volcanic ash into the atmosphere, blotting out the sun, and Europe was beset with unusual weather. There was frost in August and the temperatures fell below freezing, rivers flooded, red snow fell in Italy, crops failed and there was widespread famine, as storms raged across the Continent, and the rain was incessant.

By June of that year, Mary, who was by now calling herself Mary Godwin Shelley, her lover Percy, the notorious Lord Byron (mad, bad, and dangerous to know) their friend Dr John Polidori, and Mary’s step-sister  Clara (Claire) Clairmont were living together at the Villa Diodati on the shores of Lake Geneva in Switzerland. Because of the inclement weather they had been unable to leave the villa for sometime. To relieve the boredom they would often read poetry and tell each other stories. On the night of 16 June, as a storm raged outside, Lord Byron was reading from The Phantasmagoria, a book of German ghost stories. To the noise of the rain, the howling of the the wind, as the villa shook with the thunder and the sky-line was lit by intermittent flashes of lightening, he spoke in menacing tones. His friends were entranced and listened in rapt silence, then in fading light as the candles flickered and the fire blazed, he slammed shut the book startling his audience, and demanded that they all must write a ghost story.

Mary, was the only one among them who took the suggestion seriously. She was desparate to emerge from her companions shadows and show herself worthy of their company. She was also tormented by the death of the mother she had never known and the loss of her own baby. She had few ideas but she had a morbid fascination in the corrolary between life and death and the possibility of resurrection. A week later the conversation had turned to the principles of life and could its secrets ever be communicated. That night, on 22 June, she could not sleep and her consciousness was tormented by waking nightmares, ” My imagination, unbidden, possessed and guided me, gifting the successive images that arose in my mind with a vividness far beyond the bounds of usual reverie . . . I saw the vivid phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half-vital motion.” Frankenstein had been born.

It took a year for Mary to complete her manuscript, in the meantime she had married Percy Shelley on 30 December, 1816. The novel Frankenstein, subtitled, Prometheus Unbound, was published anonymously in January, 1818. and was a success if not a publishing sensation. This was because many people believed it to have been authored by Percy Shelley, who had done the foreword, and Mary had indeed permitted Shelley free-licence to edit the book as he wished and there has been much conjecture as to how much of the book was actually written by Mary herself. This seems unfair for Mary understood her book, she knew full-well the ideas that propelled it, and understood the effect it would have, ” Frightful must it be; for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavour to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator.” She wished to, ” speak to the mysterious fears of our nature”, that would ” curdle the blood and quicken the beating heart.” She achieved all of this through the centuries and down the ages.

Following the publication of the book Mary and Percy returned to the Continent, mainly to avoid Percy’s creditors. They lived mostly in Italy, constantly on the move and staying with friends. It was a difficult time for Mary, who had to endure the death of both of her children by Percy which plunged her into a deep depression, a depression that was to return to her at regular intervals throughout the rest of her life. Her mood wasn’t helped by Percy who continued to indulge his belief in free-love, and had numerous affairs. Mary sought solace elsewhere, though in friendship not in manifestations of the sexual act. Even so, Mary had a fourth child by Percy who she named after her wayward father. On 8 July, 1822, Percy Shelley drowned when his boat Don Juan sank in a storm in the Bay of Lerica. His body was cremated on the beach at Viareggia by Lord Byron and others, he was aged 29. Mary was devastated, and she returned to England where she lived with her father and continued to write. She never remarried saying that she had been married to a genius and that it was only possible to marry one. She died on 1 February, 1851, aged 53, in great pain from a suspected brain tumour.

Of the others who were there that momentous stormy night at the Villa Diodati, Lord Byron died of a fever on the Island of Messalonghi where he had gone to fight in the Greek War of Independence against Ottoman rule. John Polidari, who is credited with writing The Vampyre (the first vampire story in English) was heavily in debt from gambling and suffering from depression. He died on 24 August, 1821, according to the coroner from natural causes though the likelihood is he committed suicide by taking prussic acid. Claire Clairmont, the former mistress of Byron, lived to the ripe old age of 80, dying in Florence in 1879.