...one gothy summer & why you should be reading _Frankenstein_...

 “My education was neglected,

yet I was passionately fond of reading.”

~ Mary Shelley

1816 was “the year without a summer” due to some severe climate abnormalities which caused global temperatures to decrease. In the eastern part of the United States, there was a persistent fog that never seemed to dissolve.   

In Virginia, one newspaper reported a complaint, "It is now the middle of July, and we have not yet had what could properly be called summer. Easterly winds have prevailed for nearly three months past... the sun during that time has generally been obscured and the sky overcast with clouds; the air has been damp and uncomfortable, and frequently so chilling as to render the fireside a desirable retreat” (Columbian Register, July 27, 1816). 

Internationally, there were food riots in France and in the UK. While some were looting warehouses, the Swiss government declared a national emergency because of famine.  This same very summer, 200 years ago, a group of talented story-tellers were creating legends that would continue to haunt us today.

During very stormy nights in June 1816, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, and Doctor John Polidori gathered at the Villa Diodati near Lake Geneva, Switzerland. Stuck inside on holiday, they came up with the idea to have a contest to see who could write the scariest story. Thanks to the 1986 film Gothic many of us already know this story and its outcome (pauses to swoon over Julian Sands)… In many ways, the events surrounding the birth of Frankenstein have nearly equaled the novel itself.

But let’s recap… Lord Byron would write and later publish "The Burial: A Fragment" (1819) which would inspire Polidori’s The Vampyre (1819). Lord Byron also published the poem “Darkness” (July 1816) which many consider an apocalyptic tale. Mary Shelley went on to write Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus (1818). Percy Shelley wrote continuously through that time with “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty” (1817) or “Mont Blanc” (1817), neither of which are classically ghost stories but Shelley sought spiritual reality in ghosts and the dead in his youth, and he wasn’t one to follow traditions.  

My fella and I do not often read similar books. This summer I decided that I was going to read all of the works that were born out of those stormy nights. 

Aside: I’m somewhat embarrassed to admit that I read Polidori’s The Vampyre (1819) for the first time last week. I practically knew the entire plot and all of the characters; yet, because it has been sold to me as “poorly written”, I considered it a waste of time. Sigh. What is wrong with me?!? I continue to make my way through The Vampire Archives: The Most Complete Volume of Vampire Tales Ever Published (2009) and delight over some of the more ridiculous tales so Polidori’s work as short as it is was not a waste at all.

When I started Frankenstein, my fella decided that he was going to read along with me to mark the 200^th anniversary of that summer. I hope you’ll consider reading along too so that we can all mark Frankenstein Day (August 30^th, in honor of the author’s birth) in our gothy calendars. 

And of course, I cannot end this post without sharing this cute tote bag by LoveLit that I found on Etsy. The book nerd in me LOVES this bag because the Creature (whom we typically, and incorrectly, call "Frankenstein") is reading Paradise Lost, which happens in the novel so it is perfectly cute and perfectly accurate. Gwee!