Mary Shelley

John Hopkins (0:02)

It is June, 1816, an unseasonably cold and misty evening in the Swiss Alps. Rain lashes the windows of the Villa Diodati, an elegant whitewashed mansion on the shores of Lake Geneva. Though the sun has not yet set, the sky is overcast. Thanks to a massive volcanic eruption last year, thousands of miles away, much of Europe seems trapped in a permanent dusk.

Inside the villa, the drawing room is illuminated by fire. It spits and crackles in the grate, casting jagged shadows. A small group sits huddled together on either side of the hearth. On one damask cupboard sofa sits a young couple holding hands. Mary, in her late teens with large eyes and urban curls, and her lover, the romantic poet, Percy Shelley. Sitting opposite are two men, a doctor, John Polidori, and his patient, the pale, dark-haired Lord Byron, another poet and of much greater repute than Percy.

Mary watches as Byron opens the cheaply bound volume of ghost stories in his lap. The page is crinkling as he finds his place. Clearing his throat, he begins to read aloud. It is a bone-chilling tale of a man who embraces his new bride on their wedding day, only to find himself holding the skeletal ghost of the woman he had previously spurned.

As the tale reaches its conclusion, something scratches against the window. Mary lets out a small gasp of fright, gripping Percy's hand tightly before the sound is identified. Just an overgrown branch knocking against the glass. She shakes her head at her own suggestiveness, but Byron is beaming. Closing the book with a snap, he leans forward excitedly and shares his idea. What if each of their little group were to write a ghost story of their own? Percy and Paula Dorry are immediately enamored of the idea, but Mary is silent. For the moment, she is at a loss for an idea. Eventually, Mary and Percy make their farewells. Creaking the front door open, they dash out into the driving rain hand in hand, careening down the path to the much smaller, neighboring house where they are staying. They do not stop running until they are safely inside their own bedroom, panting, the door shut tight against the dismal night and its imagined terrors. Hurriedly pulling on her nightgown, Mary slips between the cool sheets. But sleep eludes her as the gale intensifies outside, and images of ghosts and undead corpses spring unbidden to her mind. Suddenly, a clap of thunder rings out, and she screws her eyes shut in fright. Then, as though projected onto her closed eyelids, it comes to her, the ghost of an idea. A tale about a student of the latest scientific arts who goes beyond the bounds of nature, reanimates a corpse, and creates a monster.

Mary Shelley is best known today as the author of Frankenstein, a Gothic novel widely considered the first work of science fiction. A genre-defining work, Mary was astonishingly young when she wrote it at a mere 18 years old. As demonstrated by her Swiss sojourn with the married Percy Shelley and the scandalous Lord Byron, Mary's own life was as sensational and tragic as anything contained within the pages of her famous novel. A real-life Gothic heroine and a serious author, her work profoundly influenced English genre fiction and continues to inspire writers to this day.

But to what extent was Mary Shelley's work influenced by the revolutionary politics and philosophies of her parents? What rash decisions and traumatic events shaped her work? And how does a scary story written almost two centuries ago continue to enthrall readers and inspire writers and filmmakers today? I'm John Hopkins. From the Noiser Podcast Network, this is a short history of Mary Shelley.

The child who will later become the extraordinary Mary Shelley begins life as the daughter of two equally extraordinary parents.

Her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, is an English philosopher and educationalist. In 1790, she writes a pro-Republican treatise, A Vindication Of The Rights Of Men. This is followed, two years later, by her most famous work, A Vindication Of The Rights Of Women. It is one of the earliest works of feminist philosophy and a powerful argument for access to education for women and girls. In 1792, Wollstonecraft puts her ideological principles into practice. Alone, she heads into revolutionary France, the dangerous heart of radical European politics. There, she writes a history of the revolution and falls in love with an American adventurer named Gilbert Imlay. They have a daughter out of wedlock named Fanny. But when the child is still an infant, Imlay abandons them. Distraught, Wollstonecraft returns to England where she is reintroduced to another political radical, a former minister named William Godwin. Both fiercely opinionated, their initial meeting a few years previously ended in something of an argument. This time, things go rather better and they soon fall in love.