E X T E N S I O N GENESIS OF FRANKENSTEIN Mary Shelley and Percy Bysshe Shelley passed the summer of 1816 in Switzerland with their baby, William, and Claire Clairmont, Mary s stepsister. There they met Lord Byron and William Polidori, Byron s physician. One evening, they met at Byron s villa. In her introduction to the third edition of Frankenstein (1831), Mary Shelley reported the following events. Incessant rain often confined1 us for days to the house. Some Percy Bysshe Shelley volumes of ghost stories, translated from the German into French, fell into our hands. There was the tale of the sinful2 founder of his race, whose miserable doom3 was 4 to bestow the kiss of death on all the younger sons of his fated house5, just when they reached the age of promise. I have not seen these stories since then; but their incidents are as fresh in my mind as if I had read them yesterday. We will each write a ghost story, said Lord Byron; and his proposition was acceded to6. There were four of us. The noble author began a tale, a fragment of which he printed at the end of the poem of Mazeppa. Shelley commenced one founded on the experiences of his early life. Poor Polidori had some terrible idea about a skull-headed7 lady, who was punished for peeping8 through a key-hole what to see I forget something very wrong and shocking of course. The illustrious poets also, annoyed by the platitude9 of prose, speedily relinquished10 their uncongenial task. I busied myself to think of a story a story to rival those 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. confine: relegare. sinful: peccaminoso. doom: fato. bestow: dare. fated house: sventurata stirpe. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 12 acceded to: accettata. skull-headed: testa a teschio. peep: sbirciare. platitude: banalità. relinquish: abbandonare.