This Week in Literary History: Mary Shelley Starts Writing Frankenstein (on a Dare)

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THIS WEEK IN

JUNE 13 — JUNE 19

Mary Shelley starts writing Frankenstein (on a dare).

You never know what might happen when you go to Lord Byron’s house. Or, to be more precise, when you go to the Swiss mansion that Byron has rented for the summer of 1816 to get away from all those pesky scandals swarming around him in England. But actually, it’s more than likely that Percy Bysse Shelley and his future wife, then still called Mary Godwin, who were renting another house nearby that season, knew exactly what they were getting into when they befriended Byron.

“At first we spent our pleasant hours on the lake, or wandering on its shores,” Mary Shelley later wrote in an introduction to Frankenstein; it was only Byron who was getting any writing done. “But it proved a wet, ungenial summer,” she wrote, “and incessant rain often confined us for days to the house.” (In fact, 1816 would later become known as the Year Without a Summer, because of the effects of the eruption of the Indonesian volcano Mount Tambora the previous year—it would have been bizarrely cold and a little frightening.) One day in this un-June-like June, Percy, Mary, Lord Byron, and the writer John Polidori were holed up in Byron’s Villa Diodati, reading ghost stories to each other (in translation, natch), when Byron, inspired, challenged each of them to write their own dark tale. Over the next three days, storms raging outside, they each attempted to rise to Byron’s demand.

“I busied myself to think of a story,” Mary wrote.

—a story to rival those which had excited us to this task. One which would speak to the mysterious fears of our nature, and awaken thrilling horror—one to make the reader dread to look round, to curdle the blood, and quicken the beatings of the heart. If I did not accomplish these things, my ghost story would be unworthy of its name. I thought and pondered—vainly. I felt that blank incapability of invention which is the greatest misery of authorship, when dull Nothing replies to our anxious invocations. Have you thought of a story? I was asked each morning, and each morning I was forced to reply with a mortifying negative.

But then, as she slept one night, it came to her: “My imagination, unbidden, possessed and guided me, gifting the successive images that arose in my mind with a vividness far beyond the usual bounds of reverie,” she wrote. “I saw—with shut eyes, but acute mental vision,—I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous 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.” (The exact hour of this vision has been pinpointed by astronomers: it was between 2 am and 3 am on the morning of June 16. Which seems like exactly the time you’d expect a good idea for a horror story to come to a writer, especially such a goth one.)

In the morning, she began to write it all down.

This story would, of course, become Frankenstein. Not that Mary was the only one to rise to Byron’s challenge—John Polidori would write “The Vampyre,” an early example of the modern vampire story, and Byron himself came up with the poem “Darkness.” But only Frankenstein would truly achieve immortality—despite mixed and sometimes misogynistic reviews at the time of its publication. (At least Percy always loved it.) Over the last 205 years, it has spawned scholarly research, uncountable numbers of adaptations, some great and some terrible (but maybe still great), as well as at least a few definitely not great book covers. The novel is still the most frequently assigned book in American colleges. And unlike the heads of all the friends you tried to build for yourself in the backyard over the years, it rather holds up. Not too shabby for a book written on a friend’s challenge.

Finally, for the record . . . it’s “Frankenstein’s monster.” Thanks, we’ll see ourselves out.

MORE ON MARY SHELLEY

Did Mary Shelley Actually Lose Her Virginity to Percy on Top of Her Mother’s Grave?

Bringing Frankenstein Back to Life, 200 Years Later

Mary Shelley: Abandoned by Her Creator and Rejected by Society

SOMETHING EVERY WRITER SHOULD ASK HERSELF

“How I, when a young girl, came to think of, and to dilate upon, so very hideous an idea?”

—MARY SHELLEY
on Frankenstein

In other (old)

news this week

James Joyce’s Dubliners—which includes what might be the greatest story ever written—is published, but despite good reviews, it will sell only 499 copies in its first year on stands—one fewer than it would have taken for Joyce to start seeing royalties (June 15, 1914) • Noted burnmaster Gore Vidal, when asked in a New York Times interview how he felt about the death of William F. Buckley, Jr., replies: "I thought hell is bound to be a livelier place, as he joins forever those whom he served in life, applauding their prejudices and fanning their hatred.” (June 15, 2008) • Bloomsday is celebrated for the first time! (June 16, 1922) • Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes get married (June 16, 1956) • Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart is published by William Heinemann in a first print run of 2,000; it’s still read and loved today (June 17, 1958) • At a literary breakfast with a group of London booksellers, Samuel Johnson signs a contract, agreeing to compile A Dictionary of the English Language, one of the most influential English-language dictionaries ever published (June 18, 1746) • Mark Twain purchases a house in Redding, CT and names it Stormfield, after his own short story "Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven” (June 18, 1908) • J.D. Salinger's novella "Hapworth 16, 1924" is published in The New Yorker, occupying the majority of its pages; it will be the last of his works to be published before his death (June 19, 1965)

40 OF THE BEST VILLAINS IN LITERATURE

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ON THE ACCIDENTAL ORIGINS OF BELOVED BOOKS

“Go for broke. Always try and do too much. Dispense with safety nets. Take a deep breath before you begin talking. Aim for the stars. Keep grinning. Be bloody-minded. Argue with the world. And never forget that writing is as close as we get to keeping a hold on the thousand and one things—childhood, certainties, cities, doubts, dreams, instants, phrases, parents, loves—that go on slipping, like sand, through our fingers.”