One Summer in Geneva 1816: Frankenstein, the Vampyre and Other Collected Works

In 1816 Mary Godwin (Shelley) and poet-philosopher Percy Shelley traveled to Geneva, Switzerland to spend the summer with their friend Lord Byron. They whiled away their time on the waterfront boating, writing and talking late into many summer nights. This was the summer in which Frankenstein was conceived.

Research suggests that Mary, Percy, Lord Byron and Byron's guest, physician and writer, John Polidori, decided, at the suggestion of Lord Byron, to have a competition to see who could write the best supernatural story. It seems the summer was rainy and the group spent many hours amusing themselves reading German ghost stories and were thusly inspired. Shortly thereafter Mary Godwin had a waking dream and Frankenstein was born. Mary was 19-years-old.

Also, born of the same competition was the most famous of John Polidori's works: The Vampyre. This story was originally credited to Lord Byron; however, both he and Polidori attested it was indeed conceived and written by Polidori.

Contained within this publication: Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, John Polidori's The Vampyre plus an excerpt from The Life and Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley by Julian Marshall and an excerpt from the Selected English Letters (XV-XIX) arranged by M. Duckitt and H. Wragg (1913).