The Truth About Frankenstein

Summary

After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal – Episode: The Truth About Frankenstein

Hosts: Maddy Pelling and Anthony Delaney
Release Date: July 10, 2025
Publisher: History Hit

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Introduction

In this episode of After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal, historians Maddy Pelling and Anthony Delaney delve into the origins and legacy of the classic Gothic and science fiction novel Frankenstein. Skipping over advertisements and introductory appeals, the hosts immerse listeners directly into the dark and stormy backdrop against which Mary Shelley crafted her iconic masterpiece.

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Historical Context: The Year Without a Summer (1815-1818)

Maddy Pelling sets the stage by recounting the catastrophic eruption of Mount Tambora in 1815 on the island of Sumbawa. The eruption had far-reaching effects, including:

• Climate Anomalies: The event led to what was known as the "Year Without a Summer" in 1816, characterized by unseasonal chills, crop failures, and snow in July across the northern hemisphere.

  "An unseasonal chill spread over the northern hemisphere in what became known as the year without a summer. Crops failed, snow fell in July. Few, if any, knew its cause." (02:57)

• Social Impact: The aftermath fostered a sense of uncertainty and fear, influencing cultural and intellectual circles, including the famous gathering at Lake Geneva.

Anthony Delaney underscores the tumultuous nature of the period:

"This is not just going to be a discussion about the book Frankenstein. It's going to be about an awful lot more. About the strange and dark world that birthed it..." (02:31)

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Mary Shelley’s Background

Maddy introduces Mary Godwin (later Mary Shelley), emphasizing her intellectually rich yet tumultuous upbringing:

• Parentage: Daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft, a pioneering advocate for women's rights, and William Godwin, a renowned philosopher and novelist.

  "She didn't know her mother. Her mother died shortly after giving birth to her, but was a towering spectral figure in Mary's life growing up." (13:31)

• Education and Upbringing: Raised in a highly intellectual environment, Mary was exposed to radical ideas and literary influences from an early age.

Anthony reflects on Mary’s lineage and her early writing:

"She writes Frankenstein when she... begins it when she's 19, for goodness sake. You know, this is a girl who has had the benefits of an immense education." (14:55)

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The Lake Geneva Gathering: Birth of Frankenstein

Maddy narrates the infamous summer of 1816 at Lord Byron's villa on Lake Geneva, where a group of literary figures including:

• Lord Byron: The charismatic and controversial British Romantic poet.
• Percy Bysshe Shelley: A forward-thinking poet with radical political leanings.
• John Polidori: Byron's personal physician and aspiring writer.
• Mary Shelley: Then Mary Godwin, young and intellectually burgeoning.

Under incessant storms, the group embarked on a challenge to write their own ghost stories, sparking the creation of Frankenstein.

Maddy vividly describes the creative environment:

"Under flickering candlelight and the scratch of her quill, Mary conjured a world where man and monster met in mutual torment, one that frightened even her." (04:00)

Anthony adds personal reflections on the atmosphere and the pressure Mary might have felt:

"She must have thought, I have to impress them to keep Percy interested in me, to keep my place." (24:02)

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Mary Shelley’s Literary Genius and Challenges

The hosts discuss the complexities surrounding the creation of Frankenstein:

• Publication Anonymously: Published in 1818 when Mary was 21, Frankenstein initially appeared without her name attached, reflecting societal norms and possible fears of backlash.

  "Mary Shelley publishes this anonymously in 1818... She absolutely benefits from this upbringing." (30:02)

• Themes Explored:

  • Creation and Responsibility: Victor Frankenstein's ambition to play God leads to unintended consequences.
  • Isolation and Alienation: The creature's loneliness highlights the human need for connection and understanding.
  • Scientific Ethics: Reflecting contemporary debates on galvanism and the moral implications of scientific advancements.

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Galvanism and Scientific Inspirations

Maddy delves into the scientific backdrop that influenced Mary Shelley's writing:

• Galvanism: The study of muscle contractions induced by electrical currents, popularized by scientists like Luigi Galvani and Giovanni Aldini.

  "When he's electrocuted, he sits bolt upright on the anatomist slab, his eyes open and one of his legs starts moving... people think that he has come back to life." (38:20)

• Cultural Fascination: Public demonstrations of galvanism captured the public imagination, blurring the lines between life and death, and inspiring themes in Frankenstein.

Anthony connects these experiments to artistic portrayals:

"At the center of the image, there is a man who is sitting upright in very zombified pose from a coffin." (37:26)

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Frankenstein: Misconceptions and Core Narrative

The hosts clarify common misunderstandings about the novel:

• Victor Frankenstein: The scientist and creator, not the monster itself.

  "Frankenstein is the doctor, not the monster." (30:02)

• The Creature: Often misrepresented as the titular Frankenstein, the true narrative centers on the consequences of unchecked ambition and the denial of responsibility.

Maddy emphasizes the novel's serious tone:

"So Frankenstein is the doctor, not the monster... it's not a cheery novel, it's not light." (34:00)

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Myths and Legends Surrounding Mary Shelley

Anthony and Maddy unpack various myths and sensational stories about Mary Shelley:

• Virginity Graveyard Myth: A legend suggests Mary lost her virginity at her mother's grave, symbolizing the intertwining of death and creation in her work. However, both hosts express skepticism about its authenticity.

  "There is no evidence of this, however, certainly not in the letters that we have between Mary and Percy." (43:41)

• Circumstantial Tragedies: The lives of women associated with Mary Shelley, such as Harriet Shelley, highlight the often-overlooked personal tragedies amidst literary greatness.

  "They are often holding the children these men have left behind... they are a bunch of shits, really." (18:02)

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Legacy and Continued Relevance of Frankenstein

Maddy and Anthony explore how Frankenstein has transcended its time to remain a cornerstone of Gothic literature and science fiction:

• Enduring Themes: The ethical dilemmas of creation, the quest for knowledge, and the nature of humanity continue to resonate.

  "It's a story that has stayed with us, that has been changed in so many ways." (51:34)

• Cinematic and Literary Adaptations: From stage plays featuring actors like Benedict Cumberbatch to modern TV series like Penny Dreadful, Frankenstein's influence permeates contemporary media.

  "We always see it portrayed as... the most exciting period... it's so often overlooked or prettified." (52:56)

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Concluding Thoughts

Wrapping up, the hosts reflect on the vibrant and chaotic era that birthed Frankenstein, advocating for a deeper appreciation of the complexities behind the Gothic genre:

"This is a darker, more serious, more exciting, more challenging reality..." (12:17)

Listeners are encouraged to explore more episodes that delve into related historical contexts, emphasizing the rich tapestry of events that shape literary masterpieces.

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Notable Quotes

• Maddy Pelling:

  "Under flickering candlelight and the scratch of her quill, Mary conjured a world where man and monster met in mutual torment, one that frightened even her." (04:00)

• Anthony Delaney:

  "She must have thought, I have to impress them to keep Percy interested in me, to keep my place." (24:02)

• Maddy Pelling:

  "It's a story that has stayed with us, that has been changed in so many ways." (51:34)

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For Further Listening:
Explore related episodes such as "Final Days of George III" and upcoming discussions on the Luddites to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the era surrounding Frankenstein.

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Subscribe:
To immerse yourself in hundreds of hours of original documentaries and ad-free podcasts, sign up at History Hit.

Transcript

[Maddy Pelling]

Hello everyone. It's us, your hosts, Maddy Pelling and Anthony Delaney.

[Anthony Delaney]

But before we begin the show, we want to ask for a few seconds.

[Maddy Pelling]

Of your time if you're enjoying After Dark. And we love you if you are. We would love you just a little bit more if you could vote for us in the Listener's Choice category at the British Podcast Awards.

[Anthony Delaney]

So go to the Show Notes now, click the link and just then search for After Dark. Fill in your name and your email and don't forget to confirm they will send you an email you need to confirm. The whole process probably takes about 30 seconds.

[Maddy Pelling]

If you've already voted, we are so, so grateful. If you haven't stop what you are doing right now. Vote for us before you enjoy this show.

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[Anthony Delaney]

Hello and welcome back to After Dark. I'm Anthony.

[Maddy Pelling]

And I'm Maddie.

[Anthony Delaney]

And in today's episode, we are exploring the history behind a Gothic and science fiction classic. We've been waiting to do this for quite some time. It is, of course, Frankenstein, and we begin, as such tales so often do, on a dark and stormy night.

[Maddy Pelling]

In 1815, on the east Indian island of Sumbawa, the volcano Mount Tambora erupted, sending vast plumes of molten ash into the atmosphere. So immense was the explosion that it was heard by British East India Company men hundreds of miles away. Thousands died in the months that followed. An unseasonal chill spread over the northern hemisphere in what became known as the year without a summer. Crops failed, snow fell in July. Few, if any, knew its cause. It was in these strange, uncanny months of 1816 that a group of young, brilliant minds gathered in a villa on the shores of Lake Geneva. Under enduringly black and menacing skies, the stage was set for the birth of a gothic masterpiece, confined indoors by relentless storms. Lord Byron, his physician and friend John Polidori, the poet Percy Bysshess Shelley, and the young woman he had brought with him, Mary Godwin, passed the time telling old ghost stories. But as the night wore on, their supply of clinking chains, chains and spectral figures began to run a little bit dry. It was then that Byron had an idea. Each guest, he declared, must write a chilling tale of their own. What followed would shape the course of horror and science fiction forever. As each retired to their own quarters to write, Mary, fresh from England and a childhood of loss and radical education, slipped into a waking dream. What she found in the dark, swirling corners of her mind was a monster for the modern age and a man who would haunt readers for the next 200 years. A scientist who dared to play God and the tragic creature he created. The result was Frankenstein, a novel born not just of imagination, but of contemporary debate around death, humanity and raw, animalistic fear. Under flickering candlelight and the scratch of her quill, Mary conjured a world where man and monster met in mutual torment, one that frightened even her. As she wrote in these pages, there is something at work in my soul which I do not understand. This is after dark, and this is the truth about Frankenstein. Sam.

[Anthony Delaney]

So Maddie and I are recording this episode after a long time of wanting to, actually. But we're recording it when there is an amber heat warning out for the weekend ahead. And it's June. It's the end of June, the very end. Of June. And Maddy was just describing July there. And I was kind of thinking to myself, what I wouldn't give for a sprinkling of snow in July. But that is our Gothic disposition. And this is not, as you may well know, when it comes to After Dark. This is not just going to be a discussion about the book Frankenstein. It's going to be about an awful lot more. About the strange and dark world that birthed it, of course, and the woman who wrote it. And that is, of course, Mary Godwin, AKA Mary Shelley. But before we dive into what Mary was doing, how this book came about, how this monster was created, let's talk a little bit about the historical context. So let's start in the year of publication. Maddie. 1818. Tell us what. What's going on.

[Maddy Pelling]

I think this must be one of my favourite eras in history. You know, a few episodes ago, you said to me that if I was a decade, I would be the 1790s. And by the way, listeners are desperate to know what your decade is, so we'll get to that in a second. But I think the 1790s through to about 1820 is my sweet spot. And I know you're not one for this period particularly. You like an earlier period, don't you?

[Anthony Delaney]

I do love this too. But, yeah, it's not where. If I could time travel back, it's not where I'd land myself.

[Maddy Pelling]

What is your decade of choice, then, if you were to personify a decade in time.

[Anthony Delaney]

1720S, babe, without skipping a beat, that's me. I know my answer. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Maddy Pelling]

Why the 1720s?

[Anthony Delaney]

I don't know. It's that cusp thing between 17th and 18th century. Because, remember, for my. Even though I did 18th century, for my PhD, my ma is in early modern 17th century.

[Maddy Pelling]

He's an impostor.

[Anthony Delaney]

So it's like. Yeah, I don't know. That 1720s thing seems to be if we talk about the long 17th century and the long 18th century, it seems to sit very comfortably in between both of them. So, yeah, I'd be 1720s.

[Maddy Pelling]

The nice overlapping spot. Lovely. Okay.

[Anthony Delaney]

Yeah, yeah.

[Maddy Pelling]

So taking us back to 1818 then, because it's completely superior. So we have George III still on the throne, but he is incapacitated. If you want to know more about him, you should listen to our episode on the Final Days of George iii. Actually, he's such a fascinating figure, but he is incapacitated due to mental and physical illness, and his son, the Prince of Wales, is now ruling as the Prince Regent. This is an era that is incredibly rich in terms of art, in terms of literature. We have, of course, Jane Austen writing during this period. And in fact, Jane Austen's famous Gothic novel, which is a satirical take on the Gothic novels of the late 18th century, is published in 1818, the same year as Frankenstein. What a year to be a goth adjacent girl, I tell you, Goth adjacent. The excitement, Goth adjacent, dark in my heart, slightly more colourful on my exterior.

[Anthony Delaney]

But I'm not exterior.

[Maddy Pelling]

You once described yourself, I think, as dressing as like a depressed monk.

[Anthony Delaney]

Possibly. That sounds accurate. I also go for lesbian nun.

[Maddy Pelling]

Oh, yeah.

[Anthony Delaney]

Greg James, who presents a morning breakfast show, who I think is a brilliant, brilliant broadcaster. But he describes something along the lines of like sad boy summer or something like that. I'm paraphrasing and it's very. That for me, I'm like, oh, God, okay, let's endure this for the next however many months that we must endure it. I love darkness. Well, I interpret darkness as coziness, but that's fine. So this is right up my gig in terms of that.

[Maddy Pelling]

This is comforting, although you might not have felt that comforted if you're alive in this era. So we have the Napoleonic wars going on. They end in 1815 at the battle of Waterloo. And this is a world, therefore, that has changed. The Empire, the British Empire, the French Empire, has changed shape during this global conflict. And there is real, genuine fear in Britain leading up to 1815. Fear of invasion, fear of revolution at home, fear of plots. You know, Talking of the 1790s, the French and the Irish tried to team up at one point against the British. And there's a real sense that the world is closing in on Britain, that there's huge kind of threat. And, you know, you just have to think of all those militia officers in any Jane Austen novel and their presence, which is so sort of romantic and sexy in the books, you know, their presence in these small villages and towns across England certainly was really a cause for an that moment. We also have leading into 1818, 1819, we have these socially radical movements beginning and we are also doing an episode on the Luddites and the sort of slightly earlier period to this in the 1810s, leading into the. The 18 teens. And there's, yeah, huge sort of radicalism, there's political unrest. And of course, in 1819, there's the Peterloo Massacre in Manchester. That's the kind of context that we're in. Obviously we have the Romantic poets as well. We've got Wordsworth, we've got Coleridge, we've Got Keats, we've got Walter Scott kind of beginning to rise up and, you know, sort of a romanticisation of the English countryside, of British history, of a kind of what's seen as a simpler, nobler time, before industrialization, as William Blake has, you know, the sort of. The dark satanic mills have ruined the landscape and taken over everyone's kind of psychological view of their world where they sit within it. It's a period of change, it's a period of experimentation, scientifically and artistically. What's not to love? It's just the most exciting.

[Anthony Delaney]

No, I do like this as well. Yeah, yeah.

[Maddy Pelling]

And it's. It's that kind of move out of, like, the strictures and the. The routines and the boundaries of Enlightenment, this kind of taxonomic idea of, like, here is the world, here are the categories. We have to put people and things into the categories and that's it. Now we understand everything.

[Anthony Delaney]

Yes, yeah, yeah.

[Maddy Pelling]

And it's before the Victorian age. I always think the Victorians ruin everything, which is potentially a little bit unfair.

[Anthony Delaney]

But I think it's unfounded. But I agree.

[Maddy Pelling]

Yeah. It's a kind of the very beginning, two decades of the 19th century are this kind of unbuttoned, wild, bodice ripping, sexy, violent, dangerous, exciting time when everything is changing and everything is to play for the old world is disappearing and a new world is coming in.

[Anthony Delaney]

You know what? I suppose it's worth saying, because this feeds into our next part of this conversation, which is, who is Mary Shelley? All of those things are true if you're white and free.

[Maddy Pelling]

Absolutely.

[Anthony Delaney]

I suppose that's a really, like. It's so easy to forget that amongst this Jane Austen thing or this bodice ripping thing. Right. And that's often one of those criticisms that's put against these endless adaptations of Jane Austen and that kind of thing.

[Maddy Pelling]

Yes, I agree. I think what I mean by the sort of bodice riffing in this moment is the sort of. Actually, I think we've inherited this vision of Jane Austen as very sort of uptight and polite and explicitly white, actually. And I think what I mean is, like, the reality of this moment, for people like Mary Shelley, living through it, is not that polite version that we have inherited now, actually. This is a world of the breaking down, of hierarchies, messy time. Yeah, of course. And we have the debate and eventually the passing of abolition in this period as well, and certainly it continues in the United States for a long time afterwards. But, you know, there's a breaking down of all the order that's been imposed previously, I think, is what I mean, that this is not the world of Jane Austen as you know it. This is a darker, more serious, more exciting, more challenging reality, actually, that sits under it.

[Anthony Delaney]

Right. Mary herself. Then who is Mary Godwin?

[Maddy Pelling]

Never heard of her.

[Anthony Delaney]

No.

[Maddy Pelling]

The end. Okay, so Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin was born in 1797 and she died in 1851. That is a delicious lifespan.

[Anthony Delaney]

That's you, Don, right?

[Maddy Pelling]

To me, yeah.

[Anthony Delaney]

What do you mean? She's not that old when she dies. But you just mean the time period.

[Maddy Pelling]

Yeah, I mean the time period. Yeah. I mean, obviously, like, if I was in her shoes, I would want to live longer, but to be born in the 1790s, the best decade, but to live long enough to see, like, the Bronte's writing. Yum, yum, yum. Love it. Okay, so her mother, for anyone who doesn't know, is Mary Wollstonecraft, the author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. She didn't know her mother. Her mother died shortly after giving birth to her, but was a towering spectral figure in Mary's life growing up. Her father. I'm always really fascinated by William Godwin. He was a philosopher, he was a novelist, and he was also the author of several political works, including An Inquiry Concerning Political Justice. So pretty important, pretty intellectual parents, you know, that she's sprung from. And she has this culturally rich intellectual upbringing.

[Anthony Delaney]

She's an EPO baby.

[Maddy Pelling]

She is really. I mean, she's sort of a Nepo baby who is born into not necessarily money.

[Anthony Delaney]

She's not rich.

[Maddy Pelling]

She's an intellectual Nepo baby, definitely. And she absolutely benefits from this upbringing. You know, she writes Frankenstein when she. Well, she begins it when she's 19, for goodness sake. You know, this is a girl who has had the benefits of an immense education.

[Anthony Delaney]

Please. I was writing very tortured poetry in the style of John Keats when I was 19, so anything she can do, I can do way worse.

[Maddy Pelling]

Join us next episode when we will be reading aloud Anthony's poetry, for instance.

[Anthony Delaney]

I still have them. They are in my.

[Maddy Pelling]

No, you don't.

[Anthony Delaney]

They're in my office in my mum's house.

[Maddy Pelling]

We will be airing those at some point.

[Anthony Delaney]

We won't ever be. Nope, nope, nope, nope. And the poor boy that they were about, God love him, didn't even have a clue. Such as the torture of having to be a gay teenager. Anyway, go on.

[Maddy Pelling]

We will also be bringing on the boy that those poems were about on the episode. Oh, my God, Anthony Delaney, this is your life.

[Anthony Delaney]

That would be. I would like. Oh, very. You now. Okay, yeah, fine.

[Maddy Pelling]

Let's skip over that quickly.

[Anthony Delaney]

Thank you.

[Maddy Pelling]

Wow. Okay. More. More to follow. Okay, so Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin famously falls in love with the poet Percy Shelley. Now, Shelley is a pupil of her father's. He comes to the house to study with William Godwin. He is married already to a woman called Harriet and has several children. I think he has two children at this point. Nevertheless, despite the fact that Shelley is married, they fall in love with. And when Mary is just 16, he runs away with her to Europe. And that's how they end up eventually on the side of Lake Geneva. Obviously, it causes a huge scandal, and Harriet Shelley is left behind holding the kids, looking after them. She is an often forgotten figure in this story. And very tragically, she does eventually, in 1816, take her own life.

[Anthony Delaney]

Yeah, I struggle with this sometimes, Right. Because we have this romanticization of this circle. Right. And I get it. I totally fall for it myself. I'm very guilty of this myself. But actually, what this circle often do, and it's not just Shelley that does this, but there's trails of sad, disappointed, hurt people that surrounds this circle. And, you know, talking about that kind of Nepo baby thing and the structures that are falling apart and then go on to be even more codified as the 19th century goes on. I sometimes wonder if they take the piss a little bit this lot. You know, I think we can fall for them a little bit too much, that they are this kind of heroic cabal. But actually, there's a wake of sadness and destruction left in their wake often.

[Maddy Pelling]

Yeah. And the people who are left behind hurt and alone, as you say, are usually women. And the fact that we remember Mary Shelley is because she had the opportunity and the education already to be able to write a text like Frankenstein. And a lot of the women who are on the edges of this coterie, as you say, the women like Harriet Shelley, who are just left behind and discarded, let's be honest. And, you know, it's the same with several of the women who Byron has relationships with that they are often. They don't have the opportunity to write a great novel that is going to last the ages because they're often holding the children these men have left behind. They're plunged into poverty. They are left without help or protection in this very complex, changing, scary world, and therefore they're forgotten. So, yeah, I think they're a bunch of shits, really.

[Anthony Delaney]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'd probably have been friends with them.

[Maddy Pelling]

But, yes, like, oh, you would be dying to go to one of their parties. Like, you would give anything to sit round the fire with your 18th glass of wine. With Byron, of course. But I think we have to acknowledge that they were also, even in the context of their own times, they were pretty dreadful.

[Anthony Delaney]

Exactly, yeah. People didn't like them. Like, a lot of people didn't like them. So it's kind of this, you know, we've talked about the girl bossification of the likes of Anne Boleyn and stuff. And I'm not talking about that with Mary here specifically. I'm talking about the group more widely and this kind of the way we romanticize the romanticness. The fecklessness. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The way we romanticize the fecklessness. Whereas, you know, there's people at the edges of those fecklessness.

[Maddy Pelling]

Yeah, we give them a free pass, right? We're like, oh, they were tortured geniuses.

[Anthony Delaney]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Maybe they were just dickheads.

[Maddy Pelling]

Yeah, maybe they were just dickheads. Okay, so in this circle of dickheads, obviously we have Percy Bysshe Shelley himself, who, as I said, is a poet. He's very political, which kind of suits the background that Mary has come from and Mary herself is interested in and well versed in. Then we have Lord Byron, who I think. I mean, have we. Have we ever done an episode on Lord Byron?

[Anthony Delaney]

No, we haven't.

[Maddy Pelling]

You know, that's scandalous because we definitely need to do that. You know, he. That's a whole other podcast. But Lord Byron is obviously a very famous poet. He has this huge cultural influence. He has sexual relations with men and women with people deemed hugely inappropriate by sort of white aristocratic society in Britain that he comes from. He's enormously well travelled, and I'm always fascinated by the fact that he goes and spends so much time and is kind of associated with places like Greece and Albania. And obviously in this case, he's at Lake Geneva and he's still considered a British romantic poet, but actually, I think the cultures that he's steeped in are so different from the British culture at the time in so many ways, and he actively seeks them out. So he's fascinating. Also at this gathering at Lake Geneva, we have John Polidori. I always feel sorry for John Polidori. I always. I secretly quite fancy him. He's a physician, a personal physician to Lord Byron, no less. And he's also an author in his own right, and he's forgotten about. And at this gathering from which Frankenstein is born, there is a Vampire novel, possibly the first ever vampire novel born that Polidori writes, and it's just forgotten that he did that. Come on.

[Anthony Delaney]

Well, it's that, you know, we're talking about people that are collateral damage. And in a way, despite the fact that he's a man, he becomes a bit of that collateral damage. Right.

[Maddy Pelling]

He's creatively overlooked. Definitely, yeah.

[Anthony Delaney]

It also says something about class and status, because he's not the same as Byron. I mean, Shelley's not the same as Byron either, in terms of social class, but Byron is calling those shots often, and Byron's almost allowing and not allowing people to rise around him. So, again, it really brings this idea of, you know, is Byron a patriarch kind of thing? On the surface of it, absolutely not. But he's still calling the shots. And even decades later, centuries later, he still is.

[Maddy Pelling]

Yeah. And he, you know, he sort of holds court, doesn't he? Everyone gravitates towards him because he is a member of the aristocracy in a way that the others aren't. You're completely right. And at the house in Lake Geneva, he has all these exotic animals. You know, there's sort of peacocks wandering in and out. Does he have, like a monkey or something? Obviously, there's the famous story about him bringing in a bear at university. And, you know, he always has this kind of menagerie of creatures and a menagerie of people. He kind of collects both, really, and, as you say, kind of. He is a patriarch in that sense, albeit an unconventional one. He's the sort of the center of gravity around which everything orbits. And he is the one who comes up with this idea. You know, it's a dark knight. Don't forget, there's been this volcanic eruption in Indonesia, then termed the East Indies, that nobody realises is connected, by the way, to this climatological disaster that's happening across the northern hemisphere. And I wrote about this in my next book that's coming out next year, actually. But it's really hard to overstate how significant this moment was. We've had the Battle of Waterloo months before. Europe is calming down from vast warfare. There's huge loss of life, there are veterans returning. And now the skies are black, as we said, it's snowing. And this is happening not just in Europe, by the way, but in North America as well. There's a really great diary entry from. I think it's by John Adams before he is US president and he's in London. Interestingly, it's an entry for the fourth of July, and he Talks about how it will not stop raining in London. There are storms, there's torrential rain, there's flooding in the streets. Horrendous. And everyone is kind of, you know, there's therefore huge food shortages, there are famines. This is a really serious moment. It impacts oceanic travel. You know, this is a trade. This is really, really serious. And it's in this context that they all sit down together in lake Geneva, Byron, etc. And they begin to tell ghost stories. And you can absolutely imagine the atmosphere. But talking of Byron being in charge, it's Byron who says, write, everyone. Go to your room and write your own version of this. And I think what's so fascinating about that particular coterie is that your value in that group is creativity. If you are not able to create, you are cast aside. You know, Mary, at this point, she's not married to Shelley. She's run away with him, she's caused scandal back home, she's risked her reputation, albeit, you know, she's from a radical family. Maybe it's not that important to her. But in the context of, you know, think about, this is the age of Jane Austen, like, your reputation does matter, the hierarchies back home do matter, who you are, certainly for women. She's risked it all for this guy whose wife is back home and does take her own life in the same year. She's 19. She's faced with these experienced, impressive men. Don't forget, you know, there's a physician here, there's a trained physician. Byron is an aristocrat. And so she must have been feeling so much pressure to come up with a fantastic story in this moment. She must have thought, I have to impress them to keep Percy interested in me, to keep my place.

[Anthony Delaney]

You're right.

[Richard Karn]

Yeah.

[Anthony Delaney]

I've never thought about it like that. She must have felt that bit of pressure. And actually, that makes me double think about what I'm about to read next, which is this idea of how it came to her. It's in my notes, so I'll just have a quick read of it here and then we can talk about it a little bit more in detail. Maddy. But she says, I busied myself to think of a story, one which would speak to the mysterious fears of our nature and awaken thrilling horror. I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. You know, she describes it as, and it has been described as a waking dream, almost. So it does sound like, despite what you're saying, and I think you're probably Right. She kind of sells it as in like, well, Jesus. It just kind of magically came to me, which I think is interesting. Right, because there's a bit of spin going on there.

[Maddy Pelling]

Yeah, absolutely. And this is classic of the Romantic movement, right, this idea that creativity takes over your entire body and person. You know, think about John Quincy's Confessions of an Opium Eater, right? Or think of William Wordsworth in the Lake District lying on the floor of his parlour because he's taken too much opium to try and help him write. And his sister Dorothy's kind of mopping his forehead and, you know, another figure who falls by the wayside, by the way, to a certain extent, although she has been recovered in recent years. So there's this idea of creativity. You have to enter a heightened state, whether that's through drugs or whether it's through drink or whether it's through kind of, you know, sort of almost like a meditative process. And it's no surprise to me here that Mary is trying to make herself seem legitimate. So don't forget that this comes from the introduction. She writes this in the introduction of Frankenstein. So this is like self myth making, right? She's like, oh, I entered a waking dream and all this genius story came to me like. You can still see her manuscripts for Frankenstein. She worked on this for several years. Don't forget, it's published. She's there in 1816 beginning this. It's published in 1818. She reworks it. She reworks it. Shortly after she's spent the time in Lake Geneva, she comes to Bath. She writes a lot of this novel in Bath, by the way, when Percy's ditched her and goes back to London, I think for a while, you know, so this is work. This is hard work. Any writer will tell you this. You don't just sit there and you're struck by lightning and a great idea and then it all kind of word vomits out of you and suddenly you have a finished manuscript like she's writing herself into the mythology of the Romantics.

[Unknown]

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[Maddy Pelling]

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[Maddy Pelling]

Go to wix.com today we'll attempt a.

[Richard Karn]

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[Anthony Delaney]

Right. So we have this self mythologising that's happening around the writing where she worked incredibly hard. It wasn't just a waking dream. She had years spent on this manuscript. What is it about, then? What is Frankenstein about? Because people get this wrong, Right, at the very, very basic level of knowing who Frankenstein is.

[Maddy Pelling]

Yeah. Frankenstein is the doctor, not the monster, as everyone hopefully will know by now. Okay, so Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus, to give it its full title. It. It is written by Mary Shelley, but it is published anonymously in 1818. At the time, she's 21 when it comes out. And I mean, it's so fascinating that it's published anonymously. It is. You know, you think about two decades later when the Brontes are writing and, you know, when Emily Bronte publishes Wuthering Heights, the newspaper reports say it's an abomination and that there's no way a woman could have written this, that it must have been written by a man. Like, it's so morally bankrupt and sort of sexually vile and disgusting. So you can see why in 1818, Mary Shelley publishes this anonymously. And, you know, to a certain extent, Jane Austen published anonymously as well. Right. Certainly. I think at the beginning of her career, she has. What comes first is it sense of sensibility. And then when Pride and Prejudice comes out, it just says by the author of Sense and Sensibility all the other way around. Apologies if I'm getting that wrong. But, you know, this is, as I said, this is kind of. You talked about like sad boy summer. This is absolutely sad girl summer in 1818, when this is published and we have Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey in the same year. So both of them, interestingly, kind of bring with them social commentary and a kind of like a moral warning. Austen's. In the sense that it's a satire of earlier Gothic novels and the kind of hysteria of them and the sort of ridiculousness and that actually people reading them need to sort of calm down and get a bit of a grip and their imaginations have run away with them a little bit. But Frankenstein is concerned with, I suppose, the advancement of science, the power that men in particular have, which I think is interesting, given the context of where she sits in this wider sort of social circle. So it's an epistolary novel in that it's written as a series of letters, which is very. I mean, you do get it in the 19th century, but it's very 18th century. Right. This is the sort of. Do you. It's the earliest form of the novel. Right.

[Anthony Delaney]

I find it very. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're so right. And it has. But see, I hate 18th century novels is probably one of my least favourite things about the 18th century.

[Maddy Pelling]

I spent a lot of time as an undergrad doing an English degree, reading the 18th century novels.

[Anthony Delaney]

It's just grim. But, yes, it's there. It uses. I mean, even the ones later in Dracula, I hate. I'm just like, oh, God, stop this. But, yeah, I don't like it.

[Maddy Pelling]

I love them. I remember being in school probably in about, I don't know, year eight or nine. So how old are you then? Like, kind of in months of 13. And I remember having to write a series of letters as the characters from the Woman in white talking of 19th century Gothic novels. And I loved it. And that was a real, like, switch clicked in my head moment where I was like, oh, yeah.

[Anthony Delaney]

Oh, no, that's nice. I like that.

[Maddy Pelling]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I have a. I have a weakness and a fondness for letters, although I agree they can be tedious. And certainly the 18th century ones, where you've got to read, like, 20 letters in one chapter and you just think, boring, boring.

[Anthony Delaney]

It means there's no description, and I love description. But anyway, sorry, let's get back to Victor Frankenstein and it's him that's creating what becomes referred to as a monster.

[Maddy Pelling]

Yes. Back on track. Okay. So Victor Frankenstein is a scientist, he's a doctor. He groups together a load of body parts of dead people and he sews them all up, he electrocutes them and he brings it to life, this creature that he creates, and that is the monster. Frankenstein is the doctor, the monster is the monster. The monster comes to life and it's really a question about not only where creativity comes from, but where the soul comes from. Right. Because this monster is animated into existence and straight away, he's lonely. He wants a companion. He doesn't understand his place in the world. Frankenstein refuses to make him a companion, despite what the sequel films of the 20th century would tell you with Frankenstein's bride, etc. So the creature gets angry and fair enough, he didn't ask to be created, and he seeks revenge by killing all of Frankenstein's loved ones. So it's not a cheery novel, it's not light.

[Anthony Delaney]

No. Can I just tell you this?

[Maddy Pelling]

Yeah, go on.

[Anthony Delaney]

I went to see Benedict Cumberbatch play Frankenstein at the National Theatre a few.

[Maddy Pelling]

Years ago, where they swapped the roles. Yes.

[Anthony Delaney]

I wanted to see that iteration where Benedict was the monster and that's what we ended up seeing. But more iconic than that was we sat beside. Not because we know her, we absolutely don't. We sat beside Anna Wintour that night and. I beg your pardon, the entire way through the thing, she kept her sunglasses on. And I was like, no, she did, she did, she did. And we were close to the front, like, so they. If they wanted to, they could have looked out and seen Anna Wintour in there, in. In her. In her sunglasses. But it was because there was a lot of flash, apparently, so. And there was a lot of flash.

[Maddy Pelling]

Yeah. All that electricity.

[Anthony Delaney]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So she kept.

[Maddy Pelling]

Never told me this, haven't I? No. That's wild. What I love about the ending of the book is Frankenstein dies trying to stop the monster. The monster just disappears up to the Arctic. I love that for him.

[Anthony Delaney]

Where else would you go?

[Maddy Pelling]

Yeah, exactly. Well, that's so interesting, right, that this monstrous creation doesn't have a space in society.

[Anthony Delaney]

Civilized creation.

[Maddy Pelling]

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So he has to go somewhere that seems completely uncivilized. And, you know, certainly to a very early 19th century imagination, the Arctic is that it's an unconquered wilderness. So, you know, this is a book about the sort of the risk of men, quite specifically playing God. Interestingly, all the, you know, the monster obviously sees Frankenstein as his father, but there are no mother figures in this. All the mother characters or sister characters are, like, dead or absent. And I think that's so telling when we think about, you know, obviously not to sort of psychoanalyze too much, but when we think about Mary's own life and the death of her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, very early on, and that kind of huge absence in her life that's so present all the time. I suppose there's a theme about the sort of the question of responsibility in science. Don't forget, we're coming out of the period of the Enlightenment when there has been enormous exploration. Think of the voyages of Captain Cook. There have been experiments in electricity and galvanism, which we will talk about in a minute. But these have all come at a cost. And certainly, you know, Mary is aware of the issues that colonial expansion has brought in terms of slavery, in terms of these quote, unquote encounters that men like Cook have had with indigenous peoples around the world. You know, she is from a family who would have been aware and indeed wrote about that. So there's those kind of questions being raised in it. And also, I suppose, about the permanency of death. Right. And the moral questions. That come with that? Because this is something that was really being considered and explored in this period. Is death final? Is there a way to reverse this process and to bring people back from the dead? And it sounds to us kind of fantastical, but given the sort of vast, huge advancements of science in this moment, this was a genuine thing that people were thinking about and worrying about.

[Anthony Delaney]

You mentioned galvanism there, Maddie. And I have an image in front of me which I've never seen this before, and it's really quite striking. It is. Wow. Okay. At the center of the image, there is a man who is sitting upright in very zombified pose from a coffin. The lid's been strewn away. There is an alive man who's standing over him with his arms in the air as if to say, holy Jesus Christ, what's going on here? This is a bit too much.

[Maddy Pelling]

That's the official caption.

[Anthony Delaney]

Yes. Oh, it's called a galvanized corpse. And then we have, in the bottom left hand corner, we have two demons, which is really, really interesting. And they're apparently saying, because I can't read that time, but I've got a transcription. It says, there, we've lost him after all. See, they are bringing him to life again. So these demons in hell or wherever they are, are going, ah, shite, there's Johnny gone back up. They've taken him back to Earth because he's. He's back to life and now it's. He's gone back there. So it's really like. It's funny. It is funny, and it's clearly meant to be funny at the time too. Like they're taking the piss as well. But it's quite striking, isn't it? It's quite haunting. So tell me a little bit about what this galvanism is. Exactly.

[Maddy Pelling]

Yeah. So the history of galvanism and electricity more generally in the 18th and early 19th century is really, really interesting. And it's quite a big history. So I'm just going to give the highlights of it here because you can go away and read about this if you're interested. There's so much.

[Anthony Delaney]

Oh, Maddie's just giving you homework.

[Maddy Pelling]

Yeah, go away. There will be a test next week. So there's an Italian scientist called Luigi galvin in the 1780s, and he notices that if you pass an electrical charge through the legs of a dead frog, they kind of twitch and convulse. Right. Because the electricity goes through the muscle tissue, I suppose, and it makes it twitch. And he starts public demonstrations and really soon, across Europe and all the way to Britain, this idea spreads and people start making their own galvanistic equipment, which is kind of too scientifically complex to explain, but basically you can, like, crank the handle and there'll be, like, two kind of orbs or disks, and it creates, like, a kind of crackling bit of electricity between them, and you can kind of, like, direct that and electrocute stuff. There are other people who start to do this, and one of the huge moments comes in the earliest years of the 1800s, when a man called Giovanni Aldid, who is Galvin's nephew, you, by the way, talking of, like, nepotism in certain lines of work in this period, he does a public demonstration. And this is fascinating. I'm obsessed with this. So we know from previous episodes that we've done on body snatching and sort of an anatomy in this period that often it would be the bodies of murderers, specifically who were executed, and then they would be cut up in anatomy schools. There's A man in 1803 called George Forster who is executed for, I think, I believe, killing his wife and baby. Not a nice guy. His body is used in this demonstration and he is electrocuted. And there's an account from the time, and we have to take this with a pinch of salt because there's no way we can know this for real. But supposedly, when he's electrocuted, he sits bolt upright on the anatomist slab, his eyes open and one of his legs starts moving, and for a brief second, people think that he has come back to life. You know, so there's this kind of horror, and I suppose in this image you're describing, you know, these demons trying to drag this person back down to hell. In terms of experiments on human beings in this period, it is really the worst of the worst who are being experimented on and brought back to life in lots of ways, the people who least deserve to be reanimated. So I think that's kind of what this image is talking to. But certainly Mary Godwin was aware of these galvanistic experiments. She writes in a later introduction to Frankenstein, which I think comes from the 1830s, one of the later issues of it, she writes, perhaps the corpse would be reanimated. Galvanism had given token to such things. So we know, for example, that when she's living in Bath, after she's been out to Lake Geneva and she's finishing the manuscript of Frankenstein, literally a few doors down, there's a doctor in bath called Dr. Wilkinson who is doing these Experiments, and he's electrocuting frogs for a paying audience to come and see in between sessions at the assembly rooms, to dance or, you know, the. The Roman baths or whatever, to bathe and get rid of their gout. So it becomes a kind of popular spectacle in culture in England in this moment. So, yeah, that's. Go away and read about galvanism, because you could lose hours. Like, it is genuinely fascinating.

[Anthony Delaney]

Yeah, it is interesting, isn't it? I mean, it's interesting these kind of myths and this quasi truth myth thing that is being built up here around this whole. This whole idea of Frankenstein and his monster, let alone around Mary herself. And of course, one of the most famous myths that gets embroiled in her life and her writing is the virginity graveyard story. Now, we have draped ourselves for some history, hit socials content over this particular headstone. So tell us a little bit about this virginity graveyard story involving Mary and Percy.

[Maddy Pelling]

Yeah, So I think the thing to say about Mary Shelley is that her life is just absolutely dogged by death and by grief, Right. So obviously from the earliest moments of her life, her mother has died to give birth to her, and she just constantly loses people around her. And one of the things that she does growing up is that she spends a lot of time at her mother's grave in St Pancras old church, which is just kind of behind King's Cross station today, as you say. We went fairly recently, some of my 19th century ancestors were bigamously married in that church, which is kind of interesting. So, yeah, I have a little personal connection to it, but. So the story goes that when Mary Godwin, as she is then, and Percy Shelley first start their courtship when he's still married, he's of a part pupil of her father. I mean, she's just 16 at this point. He's like 21, 22, you know, which comes with its own issues. Not only is he married, but he's, you know, she's a child and he's significantly older. But supposedly the graveyard and her mother's grave in particular, a site that's very important to her, is the site where they meet and spend time together. Now, in the 19th century, and certainly in the 20th century, biographers of the pair do suggest that this is the place where they consummate their relationship for the first time, is where Mary supposedly loses her virginity. There is no evidence of this, however, certainly not in the letters that we have between Mary and Percy. But I think it kind of speaks to the closeness in terms of Mary's gothic imagination. And the way that she lived her life and the desire that we all have, I suppose, to kind of intertwine the two of them. Right. So so much of the gothic genre is kind of about sexuality and sexual norms and kind of sexual deviancy to a certain extent. And I think this kind of falls within that. And it's a kind of. You can see how this myth is built up, but I'm afraid it's very unlikely to be true.

[Anthony Delaney]

Yeah, I was gonna say. I'm gonna call bullshit on it. It's just. It's actually a little bit gross. Do you know what I mean? Like, it is a bit where they put, like the people that are writing this later are putting this 16 year old girl and yeah, sure, we have. The whole age of consent is different at this time, whatever. But they're putting her in the graveyard on her mother's grave.

[Maddy Pelling]

It's voyeuristic.

[Anthony Delaney]

It's whatever, guys. Yeah, like just get a fucking hobby.

[Maddy Pelling]

Yeah, exactly. Which you could say for many biographers of the 19th and 20s that doesn't.

[Anthony Delaney]

Involve 16 year old girls.

[Maddy Pelling]

Exactly. Yeah. Interesting fact, if you go to the graveyard today at St. Precious Old Church, Mary Wollstonecraft, her grave marker is still there and you can see it. And people leave all kinds of things. They leave like pens, some people leave like lipstick kisses on the marker and stuff, which I think is kind of interesting. But her body is not there. It was moved by Percy Florence Shelley, who is her grandson. He's the son of Mary and Percy Shelley. It was moved to Bournemouth in the mid 19th century, so her body isn't there now. An interesting link to a previous episode. We've done Percy Florence Shelley, so the son of Mary Shelley, the grandson of Mary Wollstonecraft. When we did the episode on the London Torso Killer, which is a, you know, really grim history, but do go back and listen to that, because one of the victims in those murders, a leg was thrown over the garden wall of Percy Florence Shelley.

[Anthony Delaney]

Oh, yeah.

[Maddy Pelling]

In London. Yeah. Which is just a weird little link.

[Anthony Delaney]

He's turning up in random places. Somebody needs to look into him.

[Maddy Pelling]

Yeah.

[Anthony Delaney]

His body's aplenty around that fella.

[Maddy Pelling]

Wow. This so much death that surrounds Mary Godwin, Mary Shelley, as she becomes later. You know, we don't really have time here to talk about all the deaths that happen around her. There's Percy's first wife, as we said.

[Anthony Delaney]

I mean, that's actually a separate episode. We should do that episode.

[Maddy Pelling]

Yeah, we really should. We should also do an episode on Fanny Imlay, who is Mary's maternal half sister. So she is the baby that Mary Wollstonecraft has during the French Revolution in Paris with an American diplomat. It's a wild story that involves them going treasure hunting in Scandinavia. That's a whole other thing. We'll do that episode, but I just want to flag another of the great deaths in Mary's life that kind of, I suppose, contribute to the sort of the gothic mythology around her. And that is Percy Shelley's own death in 1822. Now this makes my eyes roll so much. I have no time for Percy Shelley. He drowns in a boating accident, which I suppose he couldn't have helped, but, like, it just irritates me, you know. He's a young father of several children. The children from his first marriage have been left motherless and he's abandoned them. And he's also had multiple children with Mary, many of whom die, by the way, at very young ages. And it's very, very tragic when he dies. This is what makes my eyes roll. He's only identifiable by the book of Keats poetry in his pocket because he's found 10 days later in the water. And this just reminds me of Willoughby in Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility when he first meets Marianne, one of the sisters in the novel. And she's so taken by him and he's like, oh, he's so performative. He's like, who's been reading Shakespeare's sonnets? Because he sees the book out on the table, he's like, oh, that's so funny. Because I have a miniature pocketbook of Shakespeare's sonnets that I carry with me everywhere. And it's just such a cringe moment of like red flag, immediate red flag. You have a tiny book of Shakespeare in your pocket. Please, that's embarrassing.

[Anthony Delaney]

You're the guy who brings a feckin guitar to a house party. I'm like, leave that.

[Maddy Pelling]

Yes.

[Anthony Delaney]

At home. Nobody wants to hear you sing. There's a world in which this is all lies, you know, because, you know, the whole unburnt heart wrapped in silk thing as well. That's not true, but it's still.

[Maddy Pelling]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Percy is identified by this book of poetry, Yorn. He is burned. I was gonna say burned at the stake. That's not the one. He's burned on a pyre. Funeral pyre, I believe, on the beach. There's lots of paintings of him sort of being burned on the beach. There is a myth, and I actually don't know if it's true. But I sort of want it to be that Percy's heart is cut out of his body before the rest of him is burned, that it's wrapped in silk and that Mary keeps it in her desk drawer for many, many years. There is a world in which it's not his heart, but it's actually one of his lungs that wasn't damaged during the cremation, but it's been kind of calcified and therefore is kind of. You know, it lasts a really long time. I mean, I. Look, it's the sort of thing that Mary would do, like fair play. And she wouldn't be the first woman in history to walk around with the heart. Slash, head, hand. You know, I'm thinking of Queen Victoria. I'm thinking of. There's a wife of one of the Tudors. Oh, who is it? I can't think now.

[Anthony Delaney]

Jim Tudor.

[Maddy Pelling]

Jim Tudor? No. Yeah, sure, Jim Tudor. Who walks around with the. The heart of her husband. Yeah. So it's not unusual. It's not as unusual as you think. But I mean, it's just sort of classic mythology, isn't it?

[Unknown]

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[Richard Karn]

Hi, I'm Richard Karn and you may have seen me on TV talking about the world's number one expandable garden hose. Well, the brand new pocket hose Copperhead with pocket pivot is here and it's a total game changer. Old fashioned hoses get kinks and creases at the spigot, but the Copperhead's pocket pivot swivels 360 degrees for full water flow and freedom to water with ease all around your home. When you're all Done. This rust proof anti burst hose shrinks back down to pocket size for effortless handling and tidy storage. Plus your super light and ultra durable pocket hose. Copperhead is backed with a 10 year warranty. What could be better than that? I'll tell you what an exciting exclusive offer just for you for a limited time. You can get a free pocket Pivot and their 10 pattern sprayer with the purchase of any size Copperhead hose. Just go to getcopperhead.com that's getcopperhead.com for your two free gifts with purchase getcopperhead.com message and data rates may apply. See terms for details.

[Anthony Delaney]

Okay, I'm gonna move on now to the Frankenstein as this kind of birth of sci fi, right? And I don't care about sci fi now. My husband very much does. He reads an awful lot of it and he enjoys that whole thing. I don't. So to me this isn't. I absolutely see that it is sci fi, but to me I don't understand it in that world. What about you? Do you, do you see it as part of that?

[Maddy Pelling]

I completely agree. I mean as an adult, I'm not a huge sci fi reader. I do love a John Wyndham novel, Day of the Triffids.

[Anthony Delaney]

Oh, that I've heard of the Chrysalids.

[Maddy Pelling]

Oh, gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous. I feel like it's not for you. Nah, it's not for you.

[Anthony Delaney]

I don't even like Doctor who and I like all of those people involved are just kind can't get on board.

[Maddy Pelling]

With that kind of stuff. No, same. I understand. I think that it is. You can class it as a sci fi novel. Is it the first? I don't know. I'm sure experts could make claims for earlier versions. You know, I think you could make an argument for something like Gulliver's Travels with its, you know, sort of miniature people and giants, etc. You could make an argument for that being kind of sci fi and that that comes in the 18th century. So it sort of doesn't interest me whether it's sci fi or not. I think to me it's a gothic novel. I think that you can read its legacy in so much of the Bronte's writing, in fact, so much of the 19th century sort of gothic genre in general and the fact that there are so many cinematic adaptations of this, theatrical adaptations. Frankenstein is a story that has stayed with us, that has been changed in so many ways. Let's not forget what's the classic TV show that you were in, Penny Dreadful. There's, you know, Frankenstein's kind of told in there interestingly, along with a load of Victorian Gothic stories. And I always think, you know, people certainly in the adaptations that we see on screen, and I think with the. Is it. Del Toro is about to release a version as well. I think in so many of those adaptations, it's portrayed as a. Like, deep into the 19th century. And I think we forget it's 1818 earlier.

[Anthony Delaney]

Yeah.

[Maddy Pelling]

The fact that Austen is still publishing. She's Dead, by the way, in 1818, but Northanger Abbey is published posthumously. This is a world that Austen, until very recently, lived in. This is a world that's only just finished fighting the Napoleonic Wars. This isn't the sort of north and south, big industrial towns version of the 19th century. There's no Queen Victoria yet. So that kind of irks me a little bit because I love this kind of strange time of fluctuation between the end and the 18th century and the sort of beginning of the Victorian period. And it's so often overlooked or prettified, as you said at the beginning, you know, it's kind of Bridgertonified and no shade to Bridgerton. Like it serves a purpose. I understand people love it, but that sort of chocolate box version, prettified, pale pinks and blues version of this world is not one that really existed. We see in some of the aesthetics of the rich at the time, but it's a far more complicated, a darker, more interesting and more exciting world than that. It wasn't all bowing and curtsying and everyone politely getting worried about who fancied who. Yes, that went on, and I don't want to dismiss that, but people are fighting for their lives. I hear they're asking questions like, what happens if we bring someone back from the dead? What are the ethics of that? What happens if we end slavery? Are these people equal to these people? As a woman, are you allowed to write a story that is completely abhorrent and vile and violent and that questions male authority and put your name to it? Are people going to accept that? What is your place in the world? Everyone is reassessing their place in the world and what the world looks like in this moment. And I really want to make a case for this being, like, the most exciting period, and I really wish we would do adaptations of it set in this moment.

[Anthony Delaney]

So on that call to identify the 1820s as the most exciting period of time in history, which, you know, I'm not going to actually argue too hard against that, it's pretty bloody exciting and pretty important. I'll leave you with your thoughts. Write into us Send us an email on afterdarkistoryhit.com or leave a comment. I've just discovered you can leave comments on the Spotify episodes. I did not know that. So now I'm seeing all your comments on the episodes. So this is all very exciting and I feel like an old granny. Go back and listen to our final Days of George, the third episode. It'll give you some further context on this time period too. I'm sure we have some other time. What else, Maddie do we have that's this time period specific?

[Maddy Pelling]

We have a murder in St. James's palace in I think 1812. Oh yeah, we're about to do the Luddites in 1811.

[Anthony Delaney]

Anyway, look, go and listen to those episodes because we are going to be spending an awful lot more time in that time period. So you're going to need to brush up on your 1800s-1837. Thanks so much for listening. Leave us a five star view wherever you get your podcasts and other people can find us too. Bye.

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