MARY SHELLEY: In 1816, Shelley spent a summer with her husband, Lord Byron and John William Polidori (credited by some as the creator of the vampire genre) near Geneva. Sitting around a log fire at Byron proposed that they each write a ghost story. One evening, unable to sleep, Shelleys story came to her: “I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together, she recalled. 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. She began writing what she assumed would be a short story, but became her first novel, Frankenstein. She later described that summer in Switzerland as the moment when I first stepped out from childhood into life. More here: shortlist/entertainment/books/the-50-coolest-authors-of-all-time
Posted on: Mon, 14 Jul 2014 12:05:06 +0000
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