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 show where the past is one long hallway of dusty, suspiciously rattling trunks, and for some reason, I insist on opening every single one. Today is January first, and we're kicking off the year with a story about a monster, a masterpiece, and a teenage girl who accidentally invented science fiction during a summer vacation that was basically one long global weather meltdown. Let's dim the lantern and step back 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 as the Year without a Summer, a title no one asked for, caused by the volcanic eruption of Mount Tambora. Europe is wrapped in cold, rain, fog, and what we might lovingly call apocalyptic vibes. Mary Shelley, who is only eighteen, is stuck inside a villa on Lake Ji with a rather dramatic group of housemates. Lord Byron is there, being as flamboyantly gloomy as possible. Percy Shelley, Mary's lover, is deep in his philosophical poet Era, and John Pauladori, Byron's physician, is quietly brooding in corners, probably writing about vampires because they're rained in for days.

1:23 Speaker 1: Byron suggests they all write ghost stories to pass the time. Mary, however, has nothing, not a single idea. She later said she felt a complete incapability of invention. But then one night she experiences a waking dream so vivid it jolts her upright. In it, she sees a young scientist kneeling beside a being he has stitched together, and she watches it come to life. Mary wakes horrified and electrified. That moment becomes the heartbeat 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 anonymously in London, no author name, no hint that this groundbreaking book came from an eighteen year old woman. The dedication is to Mary's father, which confuses, shocks and mildly offends everyone who reads it. Reviewers praise the novel's intelligence and philosophical depth, but immediately decide it must have been written by a man, probably Percy Shelley or maybe someone even more famous. The idea that Mary wrote it simply doesn't occur to them.

2:37 Speaker 1: But readers love it. They devour it, They rave about how it curdles the blood, which in Victorian terms means this book ruined my sleep, and I'll be recommending it to all my friends. By the time her name appears on the eighteen twenty three edition, the literary world is already hooked, and people are scrambling to explain how on earth Mary could have written something so bold, 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 haunted Mary Shelley forever. Victor Frankenstein is the scientist, the creature. He never gets a name at all. But the public did what the public always does. It got confused and never stopped being confused. Audiences immediately began calling the creature Frankenstein, and even early stage productions leaned into it. One actor famously painted his entire body blue because the stage lighting made him look more terrifying. That way, people fainted, pregnant women were advised to stay home.

3:48 Speaker 1: Theaters across London essentially 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. She was reading about real scientific experiments that were deeply creepy, even by today's standards. Luigi Galvani's experiments with electricity famously made dead frog legs kick, something Mary knew all about. But then she read about Giovanni Aldini, who went further in eighteen o three when he applied electrical currents to the corpse of executed criminal George Forster. Witnesses said the jaw twitched, the eyes opened, the right hand clenched, and the entire body seemed to rise slightly from the table.

4:35 Speaker 1: Some fled the room in terror, convinced Aldini had come dangerously close to reanimating the dead. Imagine being a brilliant, 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 little book enters the world without fanfare, author announcement, no book tour, no dramatic reveal, just a novel dropped anonymously into London's literary scene, destined to reshape horror, science fiction, ethical debates, and pop culture for generations, all because a teenager had a nightmare. Now that is how you start a year. And now, before we wrap up today's tale of electricity, genius and mild corpse tinkering, a quick word from our sponsor or someone who keeps insisting they are our sponsor.

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6:31 Speaker 1: And that, dear listeners, is your Strange History entry for January first, The day the world met a monster, a masterpiece, and a teenage author who rewrote literary history. Join me tomorrow for January second, when humanity shoots a spacecraft at the moon Missus and sends it drifting off like a cosmic loss balloon. Until then, keep your lanterns lit, your books dry, and your experiments strictly hypothetical.