This reference to the impact of volcanic activity on the birth of Frankenstein got me to do some digging on the "Year Without a Summer," 1816, leading to this fascinating paper, which argues: "The weather in 1816 may even be the single most determining influence upon the novel's creation."
In 1816 everyone talked about the weather. And with justification. The summer never came. The spring was unexceptional, and until mid-June the agricultural cycle proceeded normally. Then came the rains which, a few clear days excepted, lasted the summer ...In the spring, astronomers had sighted mysterious sunspots in their telescopes. During May and June these blemishes became large enough to be visible with the naked eye. People squinted at them through smoked glasses. Superstitious folk, even some less so, concluded that the sun was dying; others thought a chunk of the sun would break off and destroy the world ...On the 17th, hawkers in Paris sold a pamphlet entitled Détails sur la fin du monde. The end was to occur the next day. 'The 18th of July has passed', the Gazette de Lausanne reported laconically on the 23rd, 'and that day, which was supposed to be marked by the most frightening cataclysm, offered no other miracle than the return of good weather.' Unfortunately, the return was short lived. The sun lasted four days before again disappearing.
Assuming we bring upon ourselves the interesting weather described by President Gore in his recent documentary, what sorts of wonderful literature might it inspire in the future? We may not enjoy the same superstitions today, but we certainly have plenty of our own ...
But I also just love the idea of a partially undiscovered world. As the Clubbe article continues:
We easily forget that Frankenstein appeared in a world still very imperfectly charted. In 1816 almost none of the earth's high peaks had been scaled; less than fifty years before, Captain Cook had claimed for England the hardly-known continent of Australia. The arctic regions remained terra incognita and, as Captain Walton's letters remind us, the subject of intense speculation ... Mary Wollstonecraft described primitive customs in Norway, and Byron was among the first Englishmen of the day to have set foot in what is now Albania. Huge tracts of Africa, the American continents, and Asia were unknown to Europeans. Numerous islands remained undiscovered. Contemporary maps indicate the known world surrounded by large uncharted areas where angels blew trumpets and sea-serpents rose out of the waves.
The world of Frankenstein, we remember, lies closer in time to that of Gulliver's Travels than to our own ... In 1816 the eerie creations imagined by Mary Shelley, both creature and novel, seemed all too possible. It needed only the thunder and 'pitchy blackness' of a 'tempest-toss'd' summer to launch them into life.
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