From a volcano in Indonesia to a frog in Bologna, a ghoulishly large number of ideas and events wormed into Mary Shelley's dazzling mind as she imagined the "hideous phantasm of a man" at the ...

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was born in 1816 on the cold, wet shores of Lake Geneva, under thundery, leaden skies. It was the “year without a summer” when the eruption of a volcano in ...