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The summer of 1816
was one of the darkest
and coldest in modern
times, as tons of
ash from the eruption
of Mount Tambora
in Indonesia blocked
the sunlight to
varying degrees
over much of the
world
This was the legendary
summer in which
Percy Bysshe Shelley,
Mary Wollstonecraft
Shelley and Mary's
stepsister Claire
visited Lord Byron
at Lake Geneva in
Switzerland. Byron's
physician Dr. John
Polidori, the son
of an Italian émigré
and an English governess,
was also a part
of the social circle.
The gathering had
all the makings
for dramatic and
eventful chemistry,
with the dark and
rare weather mixed
with the drinking
of absinthe and
a creative obsession
over a book of ghost
stories entitled
Fantasmagoriana
fueling the famous
writing contest
of which Mary's
'Frankenstein' and
Polidori's 'The
Vampyre' were the
result.
Adding to the melodrama
were the poets'
paradoxical belief
in both 'free love'
and idealized romance,
plus the fact that
Claire was Byron's
past lover, then
pregnant and spurned.
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