Frankenstein
That the story of Frankenstein is written by a 19 year old on a trip in the Alps is little known.
Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin was on the run with her lover and poet Percy Bysshe Shelley visiting Lord Byron in his villa on Lake Geneva. It was the rainy summer of 1816, after history’s largest volcanic eruption (Tambora, Indonesia) when the three chose to sit inside by the open fireplace and read German horror stories to each other.
Lord Byron thought that they would all write their own supernatural tale. Mary wrote a draft during a sleepless night and with encouragement from Percy completed her world famous novel. Some recent researchers claim that the name Frankenstein is taken from Burg Frankenstein in Darmstadt, a place the author is said to have visited on the way to the Alps. Interestingly, in Lucerne, just north of Engelberg they ran out of money and returned to England. He was broke and she was pregnant.
A fate similar to many a ski bum?
