how did mary shelley come up with frankenstein

Mary Shelley conceived Frankenstein during a creative challenge among friends during the summer of 1816, commonly called the Year Without a Summer, and it drew on a mix of personal experiences, contemporary science, and Gothic romance traditions. The core spark was a literary wager and a collaborative storytelling mood with her husband Percy Bysshe Shelley and their circle, including Lord Byron and John Polidori, who were staying at the Villa Diodati near Lake Geneva. The persistent damp, cold weather kept them indoors, and Byron proposed that each person write a ghost story, which prompted Mary to outline a tale about a scientist who brings a creature to life and then confronts the consequences of that act. This prompt evolved into Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus, which she began around 1816 and published anonymously in 1818. The narrative’s themes and science-adjacent ideas were influenced by contemporary discussions of galvanism, electricity, and the limits of human knowledge, as well as Romantic and Gothic literary currents. Over the years, the work has been read as an exploration of creation, responsibility, ambition, and the ethical boundaries of science.