Mary Shelley and ’Frankenstein’

The novel ’Frankenstein’ was written on this spot in 1816-17.

Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, aged 19, arrived in Bath in September 1816 and took lodgings here at Abbey Church Yard. That house was demolished to make way for the Pump Room extension In the 1890s.

She attended sclentific lectures by DrWilkinson in the nearby Kingston Lecture Room. He suggested that one day electricity might be used to bring inanimate matter to life. This Idea resonated with Mary, who had recently experienced nightmares in thunderstorms and inspired her to write ’Frankenstein’.

Mary married the poet Percy Shelley in December 1816. When she left Bath early in 1817 much of the novel had been written, It was published anonymously in London in January 1818.

Coincidentally there is now a vault beneath this sign containing an electricity sub-station that delivers thousands of volts to central Bath.

The sign is located where the Pump Room currently stands. As indicated on the sign, the writer Mary Shelley wrote a large part of the horror book "Frankenstein" in this place, the book in which a student named Victor Frankenstein creates a living creature from the parts he connects.
According to what is written on the sign, the idea for writing the book came to the writer from a lecture on the powers of electricity that she heard here in Bath. It is accepted that the book was written following an intervention between the writer and her partner Percy Shelley and Lord Byron in 1818 about writing a horror story. It is possible that, according to the sign, she began writing the book while in Bath, and the intervention caused it to be published.

The following picture shows the sign in its entirety, with the text: THE PUMP ROOM, BATH appearing at the top
Click for a larger image

The Pump Room was photographed on the same day Click for a larger image