The Volcano That Gave Us Frankenstein

How did a volcano give us Frankenstein, and how did the monster lose his voice? The trail starts with the most powerful eruption in recorded history, runs through a rainy summer beside Lake Geneva and a ghost-story contest, and ends on a London stage and a Hollywood film studio. In this episode: Tambora in April 1815 and the summer that never came, the Villa Diodati in 1816 where an eighteen-year-old named Mary Shelley had her waking dream, galvanism and the experiments in the air at the time, what the book actually says (no bolts, no flat head, and the creature talks), the 1823 stage play that took his voice, the 1910 Edison film, Universal's 1931 film, and how the name "Frankenstein" slid from the doctor to the monster. A volcano did not write the book: it ruined a summer, and the rest is what people did with that summer. Where we are giving our own reading rather than a proven fact, the episode says so. So, did you learn anything new about Frankenstein today? Tell us what in the comments. 0:00 Picture Frankenstein 0:13 How did a volcano give us Frankenstein? 0:25 Chapter 1: Tambora, and the summer that never came 1:59 Chapter 2: The rain, the contest, and a dream 3:13 Chapter 3: A spark in the air 4:37 Chapter 4: What she actually wrote 6:37 Chapter 5: The stage takes his voice 7:49 Chapter 6: 1931: the bolts 8:50 Chapter 7: The name slides 9:53 So how did a volcano give us Frankenstein? Sources and further reading • Mary Shelley, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818), and her introduction to the 1831 edition • Giovanni Aldini, Essai théorique et expérimental sur le galvanisme (1804) • Luigi Galvani, De viribus electricitatis in motu musculari commentarius (1791) • Richard Brinsley Peake, Presumption; or, the Fate of Frankenstein (1823) • Walter Scott's review of Frankenstein, Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine (March 1818) • John Polidori, "The Vampyre", The New Monthly Magazine (1 April 1819) • Smithsonian Institution, Global Volcanism Program: Tambora • Merriam-Webster, entry "Frankenstein" (earliest use of the name for the creation, 1834) • Paul Lewis, letter to The New York Times (June 1992) • Frankenstein (Edison Manufacturing Co., 1910, dir. J. Searle Dawley) and Frankenstein (Universal, 1931, dir. James Whale) Image and film credits • Frankenstein (Edison Manufacturing Co., 1910, dir. J. Searle Dawley). Library of Congress, via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain. • Playbills and Programs from London Theaters (TCS 63), Harvard Theatre Collection, Houghton Library, Harvard University: playbill for Presumption; or, the Fate of Frankenstein, 1823. • T. P. Cooke as the creature in Presumption (Whittock / Wageman, 1823). New York Public Library, via Wikimedia Commons. • Giovanni Aldini, Essai théorique et expérimental sur le galvanisme, 1804, plates 4 and 5. Wellcome Collection, CC BY 4.0. • Luigi Galvani, De viribus electricitatis in motu musculari commentarius, 1791, Tab. II. Wellcome Collection, CC BY 4.0. • J. M. W. Turner, The Decline of the Carthaginian Empire (1817), Tate. Photo: Sailko, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. • J. M. W. Turner, Vesuvius in Eruption, c. 1817-20. Yale Center for British Art, via Wikimedia Commons. (No painting in the episode shows Tambora.) • Richard Rothwell, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, exhibited 1840. National Portrait Gallery, London. • Tambora caldera: NASA/JSC Expedition 20 crew (ISS020-E-06563), 3 June 2009. • Other portraits, title pages, plates and prints (Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, Claire Clairmont, Walter Scott, the 1818 and 1831 editions and others) are public domain works, via Wikimedia Commons. Universal's 1931 film look is described, not shown. All other pictures are our own drawings, labelled on screen. More stories behind everyday things on this channel. Related: The Dead Farmer Who Became the Vampire Lord (the other monster from the same summer):    • The Dead Farmer Who Became the Vampire Lord   Related: How a Norwegian monster ended up in your comment section:    • How a Norwegian monster ended up in your c...   This video uses AI-generated voiceover. #Frankenstein #MaryShelley #Halloween