Timberati

One evening, during the drearily sodden summer of 1816, Lord Byron and his friends read Fantasmagoriana, (a French translation of a German book of ghost stories—they were intellectuals after all) in his Villa Diodati in Switzerland (they were rich intellectuals). Afterward, Byron suggested they all write a horror story. Everyone did except Mary, the wife of his friend, Percy. She kept demurring, saying she had not yet thought of anything suitable. Then one night they discussed the rumor that Erasmus Darwin had electrically “galvanized” a piece of a worm; an electric current had made the vermicello twitch. Mary Shelley [...]