Tag Archives: Mary Shelley

Lord Byron Returns to Chillon in 2016

At least until August 21 in

1816-1820 Byron is back ! Lord Byron’s Return

byron_chillon12016 is the 200th anniversary year of the romantic poets and Frankenstein inspiration in Switzerland. A number of events and exhibits are being offered to celebrate the “romantics summer” of 1816.

Lord George Gordon Byron visited the shores of Lake Geneva for five months in the summer of 1816, from May through October. It was a busy and auspicious time for English Literature. While staying at rented estate, the Villa Diodati in the Cologny suburb of Geneva, and joined by new friends Mary and Percy Shelley, came the now famous origin of the Frankenstein story by Mary Shelley, and Lord Byron produced his haunting Prisoner of Chillon, inspired by the beautiful castle which guards the eastern lake shore at Montreux, (called Clarens in the days of the romantics).

chillon_castle_sunriseWhile the tale of the ghost story competition at the Villa Diodati which is the common telling of the origin for Frankenstein, of which one is reminded of the line “when the legend becomes the truth, print the legend” is being celebrated with its own 200th Anniversary at the Bodmer Foundation Library in Geneva, the trip of Byron and Percy Shelley around the lake is less familiar and the Chateau Chillon is presenting its own temporary exhibition to celebrate the 200 years since the visit of the poet to its dungeons which inspired him to write of the priest held captive as a political prisoner. The aim of the 2016 bicentennial summer exhibit is to offer an homage to the man who ignited the romantic travel desires of the reading public to follow in the footsteps of the literary pioneers who described beautiful far-away places with such emotion.

Read Secret Memoirs of Mary Shelley for the real love story origin of Frankenstein

During the five months stay at Lake Geneva from May 20 until October, the Shelleys and Bryon who had not met previously, became good friends that summer. Mary dedicated the first edition of Frankenstein to the “mad, bad, dangerous to know” poet and Percy Shelley and Bryon rented a boat to explore around the lake. The stop at the Chateau Chillon was brief, like any tourist’s visit might be, but the stories he heard of Francois Bonivard and his treatment in the hands of the Savoys caused him to begin his Prisoner of Chillon verse tale while staying on the Ouchy Riviera of Lausanne.

The “Byron Experience” Exhibition

byron_chillon_bookDuring the special exhibit a self-guided tour of Castle Chillon with present the experience of Byron through documents, rare publications and objects presented in context with a collection of evocative images to present visitors with the scope of work left to us by Byron, the rock star of his age. The exhibition has original and exceptional documents and objects on display lent by various prestigious institutions, including the Geneva State Archives, the National Library of Scotland and the University Library of Lausanne. Among the objects, is a manuscript of “The Prisoner of Chillon”, which was hand copied for Byron by Mary Shelley’s step-sister Claire Clairmont, who was pregnant with Byron’s daughter Allegra at the time. He didn’t get along with her, but she was dutiful to him. Also present is a first published edition, as well as numerous original editions written by Lord Byron.

For touring the sites visited by Bryon and Shelleys, and writing of in their journals, the exhibit offers an “Alpine Journal” guide, to retrace the footsteps of Lord Byron’s and explore the alpine landscapes of which inspired those first tourists so enchanted by Switzerland, that remains an inspirational today as it was 200 years ago. The exhibition is in French, English and German.

A combined ticket is available to see the Summer of 1816 exhibits around the lake, including 1816-1820 Byron is back ! Lord Byron’s Return at Chillon Castle and Frankenstein: Creation of Darkness at the Bodmer Foundation Library.

Other Events in Switzerland celebrating Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Bryon

mary_shelley_bellinzonaSeveral events are being held in 2016 and 2017 to celebrate Lord Byron and the friends coterie of the friends’ stay in Switzerland. The Musée du Léman holds an exhibition, Wanted! A la chasse sur le lac will be open until January 8, 2017. Byron himself appears in a large fresco by the artist Aloys. In Italian speaking Switzerland, just beyond the newly inaugurated Gotthard Base Tunnel, the Sasso Corbaro Castle of Bellinzona presents an exhibition about Mary Shelley & Frankenstein through the end of July.

For more about  Chillon Castle and Bellinzona in Favorite Castles of Switzerland

From 26 August, a musical comedy version of “Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein” will be presented at the Grand-Champ theatre in Gland before moving to Geneva. While in Geneva, the Musée Rath has organized an exhibition called “Le retour des Ténèbres” (Return from the Darkness) around the myths of vampires and Dr. Frankenstein’s monster which will run later in the season from December 2, 2016 to 19 March 19, 2017, while the Brocher Foundation Research for the Future of Human Being and Society in Hermance, Switzerland also has an exhibition cycle called 1816-2016: the Frankenstein Bicentennial and symposium June 14-15 on Frankenstein’s Shadow: A Bicentennial Assessment of the Frankenstein Narrative’s Influence on biotechnology, medicine and policy

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Did Mary Shelley lie about the origin of Frankenstein?

Mary Shelley's Lost Book HateThe story has been told over and over, repeated by journalists, films and bloggers for almost 200 years. You know the familiar story, Mary Shelley, Lord Byron, Percy Shelley and John Polidori gathered around a fire on a dark and rainy night in the summer of 1816 on the shores of Lake Geneva. They made a bet with each other who could write a scarier ghost story than the “penny dreadful” writers of the day. Mary Shelley went to her room and woke up from a dream, proclaiming she had seen the vision of a student of sciences standing over the horrible creature he created, and the thus began her inspiration to write her famous novel “Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus”.

This telling appeared in the 1831 edition of the book, after the novels first appearance in 1818 without an author’s name and after becoming a scandalous sensation, came out in a new edition in 1822, with an introduction written by Percy Shelley, and then again in 1831 after Shelley’s death in Italy, with the lengthy preface, in which Mary said she included it after constant requests by readers to tell of how she came up with the story, told of how she struggled for several days to think of a worthy ghost story, and then finally one night, as she lay to sleep, “I saw—with shut eyes, but acute mental vision,—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. I opened mine in terror. The idea so possessed my mind, that a thrill of fear ran through me, and I wished to exchange the ghastly image of my fancy for the realities around.”

But is this story the full truth? As Mary said herself, “Everything must have a beginning, and that beginning must be linked to something that went before.” Authors do not wake up one morning and invent a full story. An idea, a concept, a vision, surely, but invariably informed by a personal past, a connection to something deeper in a lived experience. Mary drew for her characters and setting the world of Switzerland around her, the streets of the Plain Palais of Geneva and Mont Blanc outside her window. Yet, from where would the inner life of such a collection of characters of passion and betrayal come from in a young woman of eighteen? The influences of the exciting sciences of the day, electrified vermicelli and the buried, thought dead, ringing the bells from their coffins as they awoke from comas before they might be buried, were all around in the brewing ferment of the enlightening days of the late 18th and early 19th century. The author could infuse and develop these themes as the story took shape over time. But did Mary draw upon an earlier work to shape her first published book?

At the end of her “Six Weeks Tour” elopement with Percy Shelley and her step-sister Claire in 1814, Mary began her first attempt at a novel, which she entitled “Hate”. She never finished it or published it, and this seminal work of a young budding author of remarkable talent has never seen the light of day and Mary Shelley did not reveal its themes or content.

There has been considerable academic discussion over the years about how much her husband, Percy Shelley, may have contributed to the writing of the Frankenstein novel. Certainly, he encouraged her in the writing of it, and he may have offered some editing of it, but how much does he actually appear in the characters of the novel, and who else is represented in the pages? Was Mary’s first attempt at a novel, with the theme of an unexplained hate, also an influence or cannibalized in the writing of the second work? And was Mary Shelley being artfully discreet in her description of the events of that summer in Geneva?

In her public writings, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was very careful in her telling of personal events to leave in the editor’s bin any of the extraordinary personal trauma of her life, mentioning only in the slightest passing of a phrase the deep emotional struggles and passions that must have accompanied the passionate personalities which surrounded her. Deaths of her first born, two suicides, the scorn of society, the longing for a mother and hated step-mother, betrayed by an idolized father and the willful schemes of a step-sister which brought them, with an illegitimate pregnancy, to the doorstep of Lord Byron’s summer rental.

This suggests a thematic origin of something well beyond a ghost story about the hubris of science born in an instant from the image of a waking dream. Did that waking image really come from a past experience and more deeper personal meaning than just a casual story competition. Why did she never reveal from where she derived the unusual title name?

And did Mary Shelley finally reveal the truth behind this waking vision shortly before her death in a discovered confession in the form of a personal memoir of her first journey to Switzerland, in a fuller and more intimate “revised” version of her six weeks tour in the Secret Memoirs of Mary Shelley.

Secret Memoirs of Mary Shelley  – E-Book

Secret Memoirs of Mary Shelley – Paperback

Get Mary Shelley Memoirs Audiobook Free with Trail at Audible

Secret Memoirs of Mary Shelley Audiobook at Amazon

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Frankenstein: Creation of Darkness at the Bodmer Foundation

200 Year Anniversary in Geneva

frankenstein_illustrationEver since the publishing of the 1831 edition of Mary Shelley’s masterwork “Frankenstein: Or, the Modern Prometheus”, Geneva, Switzerland has been the touchstone of lore surround the creation of the most famous work of Gothic literature, with the story of the competition between the romantics gathered on a dark and stormy night when Mary Shelley had a nightmare, waking dream, where she got the idea for a creature brought to life by a student of science.

While a number of myths and suppositions about the summer of 1816 have arisen in the 200 years since that time, an exhibit at the Martin Bodmer Foundation Library, just a short walk from the Villa Diodati, rented by Lord Gordon Byron for that summer and the nearby house rented by the Shelleys on the shores of Lake Geneva, has opened to celebrate the creation of the monster of id, of Shelley’s novel.

bodmer_frontIn the lower exhibit floor of foundation library, a row of glass cases hold 15 hand-written note pages of the first from draft version of the classic story beginning “I beheld the wretch—the miserable monster whom I had created; he held up the curtain, and his eyes, if eyes they may be called, were fixed on me.”

The Villa Diodati is now converted to private residence apartments, the gardens of the villa over-looking the lake where then Mary Godwin (she wouldn’t marry Shelley until that December) and the pregnant Claire Clairmont might have strolled while Byron and Shelley were out exploring the lake, will be open for guided tours to the public during the length of the exhibit until October 9.

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein novel was first published anonymously in 1818, and one of the editions found in the exhibit is inscribed to “To Lord Byron from the Author”.

Mary also wrote of the gloominess of the weather that summer and the exhibit features a weather report for June remarking on the late leafing of the trees. The weather has since been attributed to a volcanic eruption Mt. Tambora in Indonesia which created havoc with the climate across the globe that year.

While in Geneva other Shelley sites that can be visited including the statue of the “creature” named “Frankie” on the Plainpalais where the murder of the Frankenstein’s son took place in the novel, the Hotel d’Angleterre (not the actual one the Shelleys stayed at but a block from the spot, the birth house of Jean Jacques Rousseau whose writing ignited the romantic literature movement and drew the English romantics to Switzerland, and spots around the lake visited by Bryon and Shelley, from the Chateau Chillon  castle which inspired the Prisoner of Chillon for Byron, and the Hotel de l’Ancre in Lausanne where he began to write the work for which he abandoned his original idea of a vampire from legends he had heard in Turkey that he turned over to Polidori.

Creation of Darkness May 14-Oct 9 Martin Bodmer Foundation

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“Game of Thrones” Stars tossed in the “Storm”

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Elle Fanning and Douglas Booth as Mary Shelley and Percy Shelley

More casting has been announced in the now filming Mary Shelley and Percy Shelley story “A Storm in The Stars” added to the principal lead characters of Elle Fanning as Mary, Douglas Booth as Shelley and Bel Powley as Claire. Some time ago a Game of Thrones cast member, Sophie Turner, had been announced to play Mary Shelley in an alternative project “Mary Shelley’s Monster”, which hasn’t taken off, but more alumni from the HBO medieval hit have now found their way into the Haifaa Al-Mansour directed version of the stormy relationship of the 19th Century poetic personalities from a screenplay by Emma Jensen and Conor McPherson.

 

Maisie Williams (Arya Stark on Thrones) has been tapped to play Mary’s childhood friend Isabel Baxter, who Mary knew from her stay with the Baxter family in Dundee Scotland, and Stephen Dillane (Stannis Baratheon on Thrones) will play Mary’s father, publisher William Godwin, alongside Joanne Froggatt from Downton Abbey who plays Mary’s step-mother and Claire’s mother, Mary Jane Clairemont. The actor chosen to play the mad and bad Lord Byron with whom Claire has an illegitimate child, Allegra, has been revealed as Tom Sturridge (Henry IV in “The Hollow Crown” and the romantic soldier from the recent remake of “Far From The Madding Crowd”). Ben Hardy is also in the cast and Ciara Charteris is playing Percy Shelley’s first wife, Harriet.

Some newcomers are also in the film, Ingridi Verardo De Moraes, Michael Cloke, and Donna Marie Sludds. The picture has been shooting in Dublin for the London scenes and production is scheduled to move to Luxembourg sound stages.

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A Storm in the Stars Film Shoots

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Douglas Booth as Shelley

The Mary Shelley and Percy Shelley biopic “A Storm in the Stars” has begun production in Ireland, with Elle Fanning as Mary Wollstoncraft Shelley, Douglas Booth as Percy Byssche Shelley and Bel Powley as Claire Clairmont. The cast has been spotted about Dublin in costume, rather shivering in the cold weather, despite woolen coats and cravats, while the recent casting of Ben Hardy has been announced (it’s unclear whether he is playing Byron, Polidori or Hogg), and Ciara Charteris is playing Shelley’s first wife Harriet, who committed suicide before Percy and Mary could be married.

 

The film is being directed by Saudi-Arabian director Haifaa Al-Mansour following her acclaimed debut film “Wadjda”. The film’s story from a screenplay by Romance novelist Emma Jensen with co-writing credit by Irish writer Conor McPherson, follows the period in the saga when Claire moves in with the Shelleys for the writing of the novel of “Frankenstein”, and the young author’s tempestuous love affair with Percy Shelley, the infamous and familiar trip to Lake Geneva with Lord Byron, Claire’s illegitimate child with Bryon and all the drama surrounding the rocky road that turned Mary into a legend. Filming has been spotted around the Collins Barracks in Dublin. The film should be released late in 2016, at least to the festival circuit. No US theatrical distributor has been announced, while international sales are being handled by the UK’s HanWay

The period of this film takes place after the journey of Mary, Percy and Clairmont to France and their early relationship explored in The Frankenstein Diaries, The Secret Memoirs of Mary Shelley. Douglas Booth is currently appearing in another Regency era literary mashup “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies”. Elle Fanning most recently appeared in “Trumbo”.

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200th Shelley Anniversary Film Fest at Wellesley College

In the past few years, mashups—like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, currently gobbling theaters—have meant classic works have undergone radical pop transformations at the hands of Hollywood. Wellesley College in Massachusetts is taking a decidedly more unique approach in its celluloid celebration of the 200th anniversary of one classic text, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. For the prestigious all-women’s college, Shelley embodies an artist who, despite a literary world hostile to women writers, produced one of our most enduring stories, one that continues to be re-interpreted by every generation.

The College’s popular movie series, Cinephile Sundays, is honoring Shelley herself, and by extension the iconic horror story of science gone awry, by screening several films on campus. Some films allude to Shelley’s life; others reflect on, in often invitingly oblique ways, her famous monster and the issues brought up by her novel. The films being screened are stitched together under a theme of “Exquisite Combinations,” bringing to life the ways Shelley and her work have gone on to inspire filmmakers. In this series of five very different films, Shelley’s Gothic 19th-century literary vision plays out in a 20th-century artform, creating new conversations and foregrounding the long shadow of her influence and life.

One of the most iconic offerings is a screening of the silent film Metropolis, on Sunday, Feb. 28th, accompanied by a rare live musical soundtrack. Not specifically taken from Frankenstein, but clearly inspired by it. This triumph of Weimar Germany filmmaking is about Maria, an artificial woman created in the lab in Metropolis, with music for the silent film performed by Alloy Orchestra.

The first film in the series is perhaps the most explicit in its connection to Shelley’s story. The Bride of Frankenstein (1935) screens Sunday, Feb. 14. It is the sequel to the 1931 hit Frankenstein. It is widely seen as director James Whale’s masterpiece and is viewed as an icon in the genre of classic horror, delving closer to the themes of the actually novel than the original, with a cinematic appearance by Shelley herself, with Elsa Lancaster in dual roles.

The remaining films reflect widely different styles, take place around the globe, and have very different connections to Shelley and her work. The films include one on the persistent theme of man and machine (Paprika), another about the haunting effect the film Frankenstein has a little girl (El espiratu de la colmena), and lastly a film featuring another woman pioneer, Ada Lovelace, who calculated the first computer algorithm (Conceiving Ada). All films are screened in Wellesley’s Collins Cinema. Times and Dates.

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The Mary Shelley Pub Bournemouth Dorset

the_mary_shelley_pubMary Wollstonecraft Shelley probably did not spend a lot of time in pubs, as in very few casual meetings or clandestine trysts of “meet me for a pint”, though in her travels she certainly stayed in many inns of one kind or another, as in a few scenes in “Frankenstein Diaries: The Secret Memoirs of Mary Shelley“, but 200 years after creating the classic of Frankenstein she finally has a pub named for her.

Mary Shelley is buried in the Shelley family vault in the graveyard of St Peter’s Churchyard in Bournemouth, where she was interred by her son Sir Percy Florence Shelley after her death in London in 1851. The family tomb, now primarily a large marker also holds some remains of her husband Percy Bysshe Shelley (his heart, as family legend has it, brought back from Italy where his body was burned after he died of drowning). St Peter’s was the Shelley family parish church near Boscombe Manor, now part of Bournemouth and Poole College. Sir Percy Shelley bought Boscombe Manor, a modest estate in 1849 and renovated it with the intent of its being a home for his mother away from the industrial air of Victorian London, but she died before it was finished, so Sir Percy and his wife made it their home, and would have uncovered the Mary Shelley Secret Memoirs and private letters of the Frankenstein Diaries while assessing her belongings on the move from London.

mary_shelley_pub_diningWhile not the half-timber historic sort of pub from days past, but rather a new and modern restaurant and part of the Wetherspoon’s chain of pubs, The Mary Shelly is located directly across from the Parish Church of St Peter’s and the Churchyard. The menu of budget family dining and ales probably would have appealed to Mary as her tastes rather lent themselves to the frugal and functional, while her step-sister Claire might have found it rather more modest than her ambitions. Apparently the Sirloin beef is quite the specialty of Wetherspoons and Mary might have appreciated the story of the knighting of the beef by King James.

Secret Memoirs of Mary Shelley  – E-Book

Secret Memoirs of Mary Shelley – Paperback

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Frankenstein In Switzerland

Follow the travels of Mary Shelley, Percy Shelly and Lord Byron in Switzerland

Villa Diodati Plate Overlooking Lake Geneva

Villa Diodati on Lake Geneva

Most people casually familiar with Frankenstein who have not read the novel, usually seem to get the idea that the creator of the monster was German and the events happened there. This mostly comes from the movie and the name, with lots of Bavarian costumed villagers carrying pitchforks on a Hollywood backlot. Though for anyone truly familiar with Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s novel of “Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus” know that Victor Frankenstein was from Geneva, Switzerland, and many events of the story take place in and around the Lake Geneva region of southern Switzerland. And curiously, though the name is German in origin, Geneva is in French speaking Switzerland, so the added confusion.

Many fans of the story are familiar a bit with the story of the beginnings of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s novel of Frankenstein, related in a later edition introduction to the book, telling of the summer of 1816, when Mary Godwin, Percy Byssche Shelley, and Lord Byron, along with travelling companions John Polidori and Claire Clairmont gathered on the shores of Lake Geneva at a villa rented by Byron, and the contest to tell a scare story, but there is far more to discover in Switzerland than a single rental villa from long ago.

Those fascinated with the origins of the most famous monster story and the inspirations of the Romantics, the authors of the late 18th and early 19th Century who came to Switzerland to discover the still pristine wonders, might follow the clues left buried in the pages. Many of the passages in the Frankenstein novel are taken almost directly from the journals of the Shelleys’ travels.

Rousseau Plaque Geneva

Jean-Jacques Rousseau Birth House Geneva

A tour to follow the romantics might start in Geneva. The founders of the Romanticism movement in English literature were inspired by Genevan author Jean-Jacques Rousseau whose “Julie, or The New Heloise” based on a then “modern” retelling of the French legend of Abelard and Heloise, which Rousseau sets in scenes around Lake Geneva, attracted the likes of Byron and the Shelleys.

The Villa Diodati in the upscale Cologny suburb of Geneva where Byron stayed and the ghost story contest legend originated is not open to tourists, but is a private residence. But nearby, is the Bodmer Library, with a collection of rare books and manuscripts, which would have fascinated the Shelleys. While Mary and Claire stayed behind (Mary had brought her infant son and Claire was pregnant) Byron and Percy Shelley sailed a boat around the lake, visiting the castle of the Chateau Chillon and sites around Montreux (Clarens) and Vevey. Just as they did, you can visit the most famous castle in Switzerland and taste the wines of the 500 year old vineyards of the Lavaux Region.

Chateau Chillon Montreux

Chateau Chillon Lake Geneva

Byron and Shelley stopped at Ouchy in Lausanne where now the Lake Geneva Cruise boats depart for cruises of beautiful Lake Leman. Byron began his story of the Prisoner of Chillon while they stayed in the Hotel d’Angleterre in Ouchy, now commemorated with a plaque and a partner hotel of the neighboring Beau Rivage Palace Hotel. The Shelleys stayed at the Hotel d’Angleterre in Geneva (Secheron) before meeting up with Byron. The original of that one is gone, but an historic luxury hotel of the same name, for its English tourist visitors on the Grand Tour, remains about a block from where the original stood. Lord Byron also paid several visits to the literary salons of Madame de Stael, a nemesis of Napoleon and a renowned author herself, at her Chateau Coppet, which is open to the public.

Mary Shelley took many of the inspirations for the settings of her novel from the environs of Geneva. The murder of Victor Frankenstein’s son, William, by the monster he created she set on the Plaine de Plainpalais, where an art statue of the creature now stands, affectionately named “Frankie”. She chose this location because of its connection to Rousseau, when even then a monument to him was located there for its part in the uprising of the common man. The Frankenstein family house she set within the town of Belrive (Collogne-Bellerive), on the south shore of the lake, a short distance from where the Shelleys’ rented a house to be near Lord Byron’s rental at Villa Diodati in Cologny.

   “It was completely dark when I arrived in the environs of Geneva; the gates of the town were already shut; and I was obliged to pass the night at Secheron, a village at the distance of half a league from the city. The sky was serene; and, as I was unable to rest, I resolved to visit the spot where my poor William had been murdered. As I could not pass through the town, I was obliged to cross the lake in a boat to arrive at Plainpalais. During this short voyage I saw the lightning playing on the summit of Mont Blanc in the most beautiful figures… the thunder burst with a terrific crash over my head. It was echoed from Saleve, the Juras, and the Alps of Savoy…” Frankenstein

She wrote of the creature in the snowy mountains of the Mont Blanc range and Chamonix, where the creature hid with a local village farm family and Victor Frankenstein would search for his creation.

       “I passed the bridge of Pelissier, where the ravine, which the river forms, opened before me, and I began to ascend the mountain that overhangs it. Soon after, I entered the valley of Chamounix.” Frankenstein   

Geneva is only a possible beginning of a tour. Less known, is the journey Mary Godwin and Percy Shelley made in 1814 when they eloped from London, when Mary was only 16, and ran away to Paris with Mary’s step-sister Claire Clairmont, then traveled across France to Switzerland, then up the Rhine River. This journey of the romantic tour of Mary Shelley and Percy Shelley is told in “The Frankenstein Diaries: The Secret Memoirs of Mary Shelley“.

The threesome entered Switzerland from France and crossed the Jura mountains to Neuchatel (Neufchatel), where they stayed at a hotel in approximately the location of today’s Beau Rivage Neuchatel, with the same lake views the romantic travelers would have seen. Railways did not exist in 1814 and 1816, so rather than tour Switzerland by foot or horse coach, today it’s easy to visit these Switzerland sites by rail with a Swiss Pass Rail Pass. From Geneva, Neuchatel is a quick trip. Cruise the three lakes, and visit the watch-making district of La Chaux-de-Fonds in the Jura Mountains.

Lake Uri

Lake Uri at Brunnen

From Neuchatel, their path took them to Lucerne, passing through Solothurn, for a look at the cathedral. It was new at the time and they found the neo-classic formal architecture, with its crisp white marble, a bit unappealing. From Lucerne they took a boat to Brunnen where Lake Lucerne meets Lake Uri. They were fascinated by the story of William Tell and his part in the founding of Switzerland, and today you can take the Wilhelm Tell Express cruise and train route. One might pause to wonder, then, why Victor Frankenstein’s son was named William.

      “I have seen the most beautiful scenes of my own country; I have visited the lakes of Lucerne and Uri, where the snowy mountains descend almost perpendicularly to the water, casting black and impenetrable shades, which would cause a gloomy and mournful appearance were it not for the most verdant islands… I have seen this lake agitated by a tempest, when the wind tore up whirlwinds of water and gave you an idea of what the water-spout must be on the great ocean; and the waves dash with fury the base of the mountain, where the priest and his mistress were overwhelmed by an avalanche and where their dying voices are still said to be heard amid the pauses of the nightly wind; I have seen the mountains of La Valais, and the Pays de Vaud; but this country, Victor, pleases me more than all those wonders…” Frankenstein

The house where they stayed on Lake Lucerne is long gone, but Brunnen, or just down the shore, Vitznau or Weggis, offer a wonderful place to stop and explore the Lake Lucerne Riviera with the walking trails of the mountains Mary Shelley described, or the historic mountain train to Mt Rigi which would come later. When their money ran out, they took a boat back to Lucerne, admiring the chapel bridge and staying at a hotel, possibly the Wilden Mann which still exists. Then, by boat they followed the Reuss River to the Rhine, crossing the falls and on to Basel. Explore the Rhine Falls at Schaffhausen, and explore the very historic city of Basel, before getting on a plane or train back to France or continue to Germany where they traveled the Rhine River past the Castle of Frankenstein.

        “We had agreed to descend the Rhine in a boat from Strasbourg to Rotterdam, whence we might take shipping for London. During this voyage we passed many willowy islands and saw several beautiful towns. We stayed a day at Mannheim, and on the fifth from our departure from Strasbourg, arrived at Mainz. The course of the Rhine below Mainz becomes much more picturesque. The river descends rapidly and winds between hills, not high, but steep, and of beautiful forms. We saw many ruined castles standing on the edges of precipices, surrounded by black woods, high and inaccessible. This part of the Rhine, indeed, presents a singularly variegated landscape. In one spot you view rugged hills, ruined castles overlooking tremendous precipices, with the dark Rhine rushing beneath; and on the sudden turn of a promontory, flourishing vineyards with green sloping banks and a meandering river and populous towns occupy the scene…” Frankenstein

Secret Memoirs of Mary Shelley  – E-Book

Secret Memoirs of Mary Shelley – Paperback

Get Mary Shelley Memoirs Audiobook Free with Trail at Audible

Secret Memoirs of Mary Shelley Audiobook at Amazon

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The Missing Novels of Mary Shelley and Claire Clairmont

Hate and The Idiot – Competition of Two Sisters

Book Covers Hate and The Idiot Lost Novels of Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin and Jane Clara ClairmontMary Shelley is certainly famous for her seminal novel of Frankenstein, and she wrote other books to follow, but her first attempt at a novel begun during her teenage elopement and journey across Europe during the summer of 1814 with Percy Shelley and her step-sister Claire née Jane Clairmont is long missing, with only a brief reference to it in letters and her journal. And it was from that journey as well, Claire also attempted a novel, long missing to literature’s judgment.

Mary Shelley, still then Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, began a book while traveling on route back to England after the adventures of France and Switzerland only known by its title “Hate”. Mary herself never publicly elaborated on its theme or content, except that it apparently brought some amusement to Shelley. She abandoned it before completion and one could imagine it might contain themes she would revisit in her later published book, and may have been inspired by the emotional reaction to experiences of her journey of six weeks together with her step-sister and her lover across the devastated lands of France ravaged by the recent Napoleonic War. The title is at the least, tantalizing.

Claire had also begun a novel at the age of 16, with a title no less curious and intriguing for its sharp brevity, “The Idiot”. It is also lost to time and mystery, and its fate may be evidenced in her later expression of some jealousy over her sister’s and her family’s literary success, writing after the death of her brother William in 1832, “In our family, if you cannot write an epic poem or novel that by its originality knocks all other novels on the head, you are a despicable creature, not worth acknowledging.” And wondering, “What would they have done or said had their children been fond of dress, fond of cards, drunken, profligate, as most people’s children are?” – a decided contrast between her Clairmont family character and the more serious Godwins.

In her diary of September of 1814 begun after her travels, Claire would write of wanting to create a character whose independence of mind would cause others to judge them as an “Ideot”. There is evidence that Claire sent this work, perhaps more work-in-progress than completed novel, to Lord George Byron, when she had insinuated an introduction to him in 1816. She noted in letters, using her then preferred name of Clara Clairmont, that it was “half a novel or a tale”, with the pretext of looking for career advice. She was undecided upon either a writing career or an entrance onto the stage through Byron’s connection to the Drury Lane Theater, though she was possibly most interested in a romance with the poet.

Bryon apparently did not respond to it at the time. In a rather desperate sounding and forward letter of a young acolyte who had not received a response, she wrote him, “If you said you were too busy to look at it, I should have understood …it may arise from your affairs and then I am tiresome; or it may be occasioned by negligence, which to me is at least as bad.” Apparently in her eagerness, she made the mistake of submitting a first incomplete draft to someone who didn’t know her. And one may imagine what someone of Byron’s place with many eager fans may have thought of the submission. “Will you make allowance for my years? I do not expect you to approve; all I wish to know is whether I have talents, which, if aided by severe study may render me fit to become an author. I had half resolved to correct and revise it; but afterword, thought if you saw it just as it was, written at intervals, and in scraps, you would be a better judge.”

As for what the story was, she did outline her theme. “My intention was to draw a character committing every violence against received opinion…who knew no other guide on the impulses arising from herself, than herself…whose sweetness and naiveté of character should draw upon her the pity rather than the contempt of her readers.” The story also dealt with themes of Atheism and Christianity and bore some evidence of the journey she had undertaken with her step-sister and Shelley as told in The  Secret Memoirs of Mary Shelley, the Frankenstein Diaries.

“It is at present in a very rude state; perhaps the whole of the first part should be rewritten,” she went on. “The tale is too abruptly begun; I am aware that the first sentence rather tempts one to throw the book down than to continue.” Not the most positive way to present a work for judgment. It is difficult to judge the book with no example remaining, but not hard to suggest that her writing as a teenager may not have been to the standard of her relatives, though her later letters evidenced her skill with words and her intelligence. And where Mary Shelley had resolved not to make herself the protagonist of her stories, Claire’s book seemed as if it was decidedly focused on herself, if in thin disguise. Mary would begin Frankenstein about the same time that Claire was presenting her draft to Byron, and would go though many revisions with the help of Shelley.

While Bryon showed no interest in the book by Miss Clairmont, she pursued him in person, resulting in a daughter between them.  Byron rejected Claire when she came to him pregnant with his child and had apparently  coldly rejected her as he did her writing. She would write to him in 1816 following the summer in Geneva in a letter full desperation at his indifference and longing for his attention, “Now, if I tell you my thoughts, dearest, you mustn’t bring them against me to make me look foolish as you did that hateful novel thing I wrote.”

Percy Shelley may have given Claire some assistance with her story and attempted to help her get it published in 1817, offering it to two publishers, Thomas Hookham, where at the same time he and Mary were publishing their travel journal “History of a Six Weeks Tour”, and to John Murray. Claire’s book was rejected, and never heard from again. She did have the last laugh though on her tragic family circle of romantics, by living to the age of 80.

Secret Memoirs of Mary Shelley  – E-Book

Secret Memoirs of Mary Shelley – Paperback

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Lord Byron in the Hand of Mary Shelley at Keats-Shelley House Rome

Lord Byron and Mary Shelley Exhibiit at Keats-Shelley HouseFrom June 29 until November 6, 2015, the Keats-Shelley House in Rome will be offering a special exhibition “Lord Byron in the Hand of Mary Shelley”. The exhibition presents a sequence of manuscripts on loan from the National Library of Scotland, alongside Byron treasures from the Keats-Shelley House’s own collection – which explores the fascinating relationship between these two important figures of Romantic Literature and the ways in which Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley edited Byron’s work in preparation for its publication.

Mary Shelley met Lord Byron in the fateful summer of 1816 at Lake Geneva, from where the legendary contest of literary lights reading ghost stories launched the 18 year old Mary’s own writing career with imagining of the student of science and his monster. Mary and the “mad, bad, and dangerous to know” Byron, were introduced through Mary’s step-sister’s machinations. Claire Clairmont was pregnant with Byron’s child that summer and Mary had recently given birth to her first son, William, in January of that year. Byron wanted nothing to do with Claire, and would later epically fight over their daughter, Allegra, but the poet and Mary, seemed to develop a friendship. Bryon would never return to England, and his beloved Newstead Abbey, but from these manuscripts it appears Mary acted as a publishing contact following her husband’s tragic death in Italy.

The Keats-Shelley House is the residence in Rome just next to the famous Spanish Steps, where the Romantic poets Keats, Percy Shelley and Lord Gordon Byron lived while Rome, now a museum, library and exhibition center dedicated to the works and lives of the poets. The library houses 8,000 volumes of books, periodicals of these second generation Romantics, with an especially extensive collection of editions of Byron related works, collected by the library’s originator Harry Nelson Gay, as well as many lifetime and nineteenth-century editions of the works of other Romantics and influential writers of the period including William Hazlitt, Leigh Hunt, William Godwin and Thomas Lovell Beddoes, with a small collection of travel and history books celebrating the European ‘Grand Tour’.

Entrance to the exhibition is included in the price of the standard museum entrance ticket. Keats-Shelley House

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