Inspired by Mary Shelley’s preface, Linda Bailey has reimagined this well-known history in a way that is very relatable for young readers. In a preface to the third edition, written many years later, the author describes these events to explain how a young girl “came to think of and to dilate upon so very hideous an idea.” Although it would take her almost a year to complete the novel, this competition was the beginning of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. While on summer vacation in 1816, staying at Villa Diodati (a mansion on the shores of Lake Geneva), a dark and stormy night offered the ideal setting for Lord Byron to read aloud from a book of ghoulish stories called Fantasmagoriana and inspired him to propose a friendly competition in which each member of the assembled party would write a ghost story. It is the story of how an 18-year-old girl came to write one of the best-known novels of all time, inspired by a friendly competition among a group of friends that included two of the most famous authors of the age (Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron). The subject of this book is the story-behind-the-story of Dr Frankenstein and his terrible creature.
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