January 1 – The Birth of Frankenstein: How a New Year’s Novel Changed Everything

0:00 Speaker 1: Welcome back, dear listeners to the Strange History Podcast, the

0:03 Speaker 1: show where the past is one long hallway of dusty,

0:06 Speaker 1: suspiciously rattling trunks, and for some reason, I insist on

0:11 Speaker 1: opening every single one. Today is January first, and we're

0:15 Speaker 1: kicking off the year with a story about a monster,

0:17 Speaker 1: a masterpiece, and a teenage girl who accidentally invented science

0:22 Speaker 1: fiction during a summer vacation that was basically one long

0:26 Speaker 1: global weather meltdown. Let's dim the lantern and step back

0:30 Speaker 1: into the strange origins of Frankenstein.

0:33 Speaker 2: The nightmare that began everything.

0:36 Speaker 1: So picture this. The year is eighteen sixteen, famously known

0:41 Speaker 1: as the Year without a Summer, a title no one

0:44 Speaker 1: asked for, caused by the volcanic eruption of Mount Tambora.

0:48 Speaker 1: Europe is wrapped in cold, rain, fog, and what we

0:52 Speaker 1: might lovingly call apocalyptic vibes. Mary Shelley, who is only eighteen,

0:58 Speaker 1: is stuck inside a villa on Lake Ji with a

1:00 Speaker 1: rather dramatic group of housemates. Lord Byron is there, being

1:05 Speaker 1: as flamboyantly gloomy as possible. Percy Shelley, Mary's lover, is

1:10 Speaker 1: deep in his philosophical poet Era, and John Pauladori, Byron's physician,

1:16 Speaker 1: is quietly brooding in corners, probably writing about vampires because

1:21 Speaker 1: they're rained in for days. Byron suggests they all write

1:24 Speaker 1: ghost stories to pass the time. Mary, however, has nothing,

1:29 Speaker 1: not a single idea. She later said she felt a

1:32 Speaker 1: complete incapability of invention. But then one night she experiences

1:38 Speaker 1: a waking dream so vivid it jolts her upright. In it,

1:42 Speaker 1: she sees a young scientist kneeling beside a being he

1:45 Speaker 1: has stitched together, and she watches it come to life.

1:48 Speaker 1: Mary wakes horrified and electrified. That moment becomes the heartbeat

1:54 Speaker 1: of Frankenstein.

1:56 Speaker 2: The book is published quietly.

2:00 Speaker 1: Fast forward to January first, eighteen eighteen. Frankenstein is published

2:05 Speaker 1: anonymously in London, no author name, no hint that this

2:10 Speaker 1: groundbreaking book came from an eighteen year old woman. The

2:13 Speaker 1: dedication is to Mary's father, which confuses, shocks and mildly

2:18 Speaker 1: offends everyone who reads it. Reviewers praise the novel's intelligence

2:23 Speaker 1: and philosophical depth, but immediately decide it must have been

2:27 Speaker 1: written by a man, probably Percy Shelley or maybe someone

2:31 Speaker 1: even more famous. The idea that Mary wrote it simply

2:35 Speaker 1: doesn't occur to them. But readers love it. They devour it,

2:40 Speaker 1: They rave about how it curdles the blood, which in

2:43 Speaker 1: Victorian terms means this book ruined my sleep, and I'll

2:47 Speaker 1: be recommending it to all my friends. By the time

2:51 Speaker 1: her name appears on the eighteen twenty three edition, the

2:54 Speaker 1: literary world is already hooked, and people are scrambling to

2:58 Speaker 1: explain how on earth Mary could have written something so bold,

3:03 Speaker 1: scientific and unsettling. Spoiler, she was just a genius.

3:08 Speaker 2: The monster who never got a name.

3:12 Speaker 1: Here's the funny thing, and it's a detail that has

3:15 Speaker 1: haunted Mary Shelley forever. Victor Frankenstein is the scientist, the creature.

3:21 Speaker 1: He never gets a name at all. But the public

3:24 Speaker 1: did what the public always does. It got confused and

3:27 Speaker 1: never stopped being confused. Audiences immediately began calling the creature Frankenstein,

3:34 Speaker 1: and even early stage productions leaned into it. One actor

3:38 Speaker 1: famously painted his entire body blue because the stage lighting

3:41 Speaker 1: made him look more terrifying. That way, people fainted, pregnant

3:46 Speaker 1: women were advised to stay home. Theaters across London essentially

3:50 Speaker 1: became the eighteen twenties version of a Halloween haunted house.

3:54 Speaker 2: The real science that inspired the horror.

3:59 Speaker 1: Mary wasn't an imagining this stuff out of thin air.

4:02 Speaker 1: She was reading about real scientific experiments that were deeply creepy,

4:05 Speaker 1: even by today's standards. Luigi Galvani's experiments with electricity famously

4:11 Speaker 1: made dead frog legs kick, something Mary knew all about.

4:15 Speaker 1: But then she read about Giovanni Aldini, who went further

4:18 Speaker 1: in eighteen o three when he applied electrical currents to

4:22 Speaker 1: the corpse of executed criminal George Forster. Witnesses said the

4:27 Speaker 1: jaw twitched, the eyes opened, the right hand clenched, and

4:31 Speaker 1: the entire body seemed to rise slightly from the table.

4:35 Speaker 1: Some fled the room in terror, convinced Aldini had come

4:39 Speaker 1: dangerously close to reanimating the dead. Imagine being a brilliant,

4:44 Speaker 1: imaginative teenager reading that story. Of course, it becomes a novel.

4:50 Speaker 2: The New Year's gift that changed everything.

4:53 Speaker 1: So on New Year's Day of eighteen eighteen, a quiet

4:56 Speaker 1: little book enters the world without fanfare, author announcement, no

5:01 Speaker 1: book tour, no dramatic reveal, just a novel dropped anonymously

5:05 Speaker 1: into London's literary scene, destined to reshape horror, science fiction,

5:10 Speaker 1: ethical debates, and pop culture for generations, all because a

5:15 Speaker 1: teenager had a nightmare. Now that is how you start

5:17 Speaker 1: a year. And now, before we wrap up today's tale

5:21 Speaker 1: of electricity, genius and mild corpse tinkering, a quick word

5:25 Speaker 1: from our sponsor or someone who keeps insisting they are

5:29 Speaker 1: our sponsor.

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6:31 Speaker 1: And that, dear listeners, is your Strange History entry for

6:34 Speaker 1: January first, The day the world met a monster, a masterpiece,

6:39 Speaker 1: and a teenage author who rewrote literary history. Join me

6:43 Speaker 1: tomorrow for January second, when humanity shoots a spacecraft at

6:47 Speaker 1: the moon Missus and sends it drifting off like a

6:50 Speaker 1: cosmic loss balloon. Until then, keep your lanterns lit, your

6:55 Speaker 1: books dry, and your experiments strictly hypothetical.