Mary Shelley was just 18 years old when the idea for Frankenstein struck her on a rainy night in Geneva, Switzerland. Cooped up on vacation with nonstop rain, famous poet Lord Byron had challenged the group of literary geniuses to come up with a ghost story. Mary struggled. She could think of nothing. Then one night, as she struggled to sleep, she was hit with what she referred to as a "waking dream." What followed would come to define the science fiction genre, both inspiring and horrifying readers for centuries to come. But who was Mary Shelley, the creator? Who was she to bear such a creature? How did she manage to embody all that horror, that pain, that grotesque abnormality, gothic morbidity? Well, the more you know about the life of Mary Shelley, the more it all makes sense. Let’s fix that.

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Sources:

• The New Yorker "The Strange and Twisted Life of 'Frankenstein'"
• New York State Library "Mary Shelley's Monster Turns 200"
• Wikipedia "Mary Shelley"
• Biography.com "Mary Shelley"
• Snopes "Did Mary Shelley Lose Her Virginity on Her Mother's Grave?"
• JSTOR "Mary Shelley's Obsession With the Cemetery"
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy "William Godwin"

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