FRANKENSTEINit was in the summer of 1816 that mary shelley and her lover/future husband, percy shelley, were visiting their friend, lord byron, in switzerland during a period of particularly cold and wet weather which reduced them to the indoors for entertainment - before sleep that night, they discussed ghost stories and decided they would each write a short version of one - later, mary, in what is described as a "waking dream" developed the story of frankenstein:
I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling
beside the thing he had put together.
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.
Frightful must it be; for supremely frightful would be
the effect of any human endeavour to mock the
stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world...
