How did Mary Shelley come up with Frankenstein?

Answer 1

She was on holiday with a professor and her husband, when the said that they would have a ghost story competition. After many days and weeks of having no ideas, she finally got her inspiration. In a waking dream, she saw a student kneeling over the corpse of a half-alive creation, and starts in Horror when the corpse is animated and comes to life.

Additionally it is said that when she awoke in the middle of the night, her room was bathed in moonlight, and so that became a major part of the allusion to the moon (and lunacy, which derives its name from 'moon') from that night as well. Later, scientist calculated whether or not the moon would have actually been shining into her room that night, and concluded that it would have been; thus further confirming the legend of the inspiration for Frankenstein.

Answer 2

At the time of Mary writing Frankenstein the science of Bio-Electrostatics was very new and very popular. (If you zap the leg of a dissected frog it will jump). And the notion of reanimating dead tissue was a popular subject. So Mary did not come up with the idea, merely wrote a story around it.

The idea that obsessions could be deadly wasn't a new idea either, just another common plot twist that she incorporated into he story.

Likewise the controversy of Nature vs Nurture isn't new either just another philosophical point that she included.

Answer 3

Mary Shelley and her husband Percy Shelley were visiting Percy's good friend Lord Byron on the edge of Lake Geneva when they got their hands on some german and french ghost stories. They decided to have a competition to see who could write the best ghost storyand mary shelley wrote a small version of frankenstein. after much persuasion from percy she decided to turn it into a novel.

Answer 4

Shelley had been challenged to a contest by her husband and another friend, to write a ghost story, while they were traveling on vacation. At first she didn't seem to be having a great deal of luck with thinking of a story, but late in the contest she had the idea for the story in a waking dream. She was also said to have been heavily influenced by the moon that she awoke to that night. Later, scientific studies prove that the moon would have been shining through her window that night, confirming the concept of the "Frankenstein Moon", as a source of inspiration.

Shelley published Frankenstein anonymously in 1818, but in late editions of the work her was given credit for the work.

Answer 5

A new science at the time of Mary Shelley was Bio-electrics. That is to say frogs legs would jump when shocked. From this the concept of reanimating dead tissue was a popular topic of the day.

I heard they recently dug up an old Italian novel from about fifty years earlier, which told the same story, and the doctor's name was actually Frankenstein.