Tambora: The Eruption That Changed The World - Plot & Excerpts
MONSTERS OF GENEVA On the eve of the infamous lost summer of 1816, eighteen-year-old Mary Godwin took flight with her lover, Percy Shelley, and their baby for Switzerland, escaping the chilly atmosphere of her father’s house in London. Mary’s young stepsister, Claire Clairmont, accompanied them, eager to reunite with her own poet-lover, Lord Byron, who had left England for Geneva a week earlier. Mary’s other sister, the ever dispensable Fanny, was left behind. The dismal, often terrifying weather of the summer of 1816 is a touchstone of the ensuing correspondence between the sisters. In a letter to Fanny, written on her arrival in Geneva, Mary describes—in hair-raising language that would soon find its way into her novel Frankenstein—their ascent of the Alps “amidst a violent storm of wind and rain.” The cold was “excessive” and the villagers complained of the lateness of the spring. On their alpine descent days later, a snowstorm ruined their view of Geneva and its famous lake.
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