Mary Shelley wrote "Frankenstein" after being challenged by Lord Byron.

Arts & Culture

M ary Shelley's Gothic masterpiece Frankenstein is one of the horror genre's most formative works, but it may have never existed if not for a playful challenge. In 1816, Shelley — who was then unmarried and known by the surname Godwin — vacationed at Villa Diodati on Lake Geneva in Switzerland. She was accompanied by her future husband Percy Bysshe Shelley, her stepsister Claire Clairmont, English poet Lord Byron, and Byron's physician John William Polidori. Weather conditions were abnormally unpleasant at the time due to the lingering effects of the eruption of Indonesia's Mount Tambora the previous year, forcing the group to largely remain indoors. Amid the dark and frigid evenings of that "Year Without a Summer," the weary vacationers read and debated literary works late into the night, most notably horror stories and macabre poems that seemed appropriate given the gloomy weather outside.

As the days progressed, Lord Byron issued a challenge to those in attendance to write a scarier, more compelling horror story than the ones they'd been reading. Polidori eagerly and immediately complied, later publishing his novella The Vampyre in 1819, but Shelley struggled to find inspiration at first. That all changed after a ghoulish visage came to her one stormy night, which the author recounted in an 1831 preface to Frankenstein, writing, "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." Shelley began work on what became her magnum opus, and effectively "won" Lord Byron's challenge with the publication of the 1818 novel Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus.

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By the Numbers

Mary Shelley's age when Frankenstein was published

Record auction price for a first-edition copy of Frankenstein

$1.17 million

Did you know?

Thomas Edison produced the first "Frankenstein" movie.

Though 1931's Frankenstein had a more indelible impact on pop culture, Mary Shelley's work of horror was first adapted into moving-picture form by Thomas Edison in 1910. The film, totaling around 11 minutes in length at modern projection speed, was produced by the Edison Manufacturing Company, which brought on pioneering filmmaker J. Searle Dawley to write and direct the movie. Narratively, the short opens with Frankenstein departing for college, where he creates a monster after discovering the mystery of life. However, the scientist regrets his experiments, and is confronted by his evil creature at home later in the film. Despite Shelley's Gothic literary vision, Dawley was advised to focus more on the story's mystical elements than its horrific components, as Edison was a member of the prudish National Board of Censorship at the time. This early adaptation of Frankenstein was considered a lost relic for decades, until a Wisconsin man named Al Dettlaff produced a copy from his private collection in 1980.

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