When Mount Tambora erupted on Sumbawa Island in April 1815, it changed the world. The explosion, the largest in recorded history, sent more than 150 cubic kilometres of ash into the sky.
The blast darkened the Earth’s atmosphere and blocked sunlight for months, turning 1816 into what would later be called “the year without a summer”.
Across Europe and North America, crops failed, temperatures dropped, and rain fell for weeks. No one in Europe realised that the catastrophe came from a volcano on the other side of the world, in what is now Indonesia.
That same year, in a lakeside villa in Geneva, five young English travellers found their summer holiday ruined by the same volcanic ash. Among them was 18-year-old Mary Godwin, later known as Mary Shelley, and her future husband, poet Percy Bysshe Shelley.
They were guests of Lord Byron, who had invited them to spend the summer at his Villa Diodati. Also present were Claire Clairmont, Mary’s half-sister, and John William Polidori, Byron’s physician.
With the weather cold and gloomy, the group spent their days reading ghost stories indoors. One night, Byron suggested they each write their own tale of terror. The challenge sounded simple enough, yet none of them expected it would produce one of the most famous stories in history.
A Dream That Changed Literature
That evening, Mary struggled to sleep. The storm raged outside, lightning lit the sky, and in her restless half-dream, she saw something extraordinary. A scientist bent over a lifeless figure, and as he worked, the creature opened its eyes. Terrified, Mary woke up.
The next morning, she told the others what she had seen. They were intrigued, and Lord Byron encouraged her to turn the dream into a story.
As Mary later recalled, “I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together.” The dream became the seed for her novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus.
According to literary scholar Charles Robinson in The Frankenstein Notebooks (1996), Mary completed the manuscript in mid-1817. The book was published in London on 1 January 1818, initially without her name. At the time, it was credited to Lord Byron, whose fame would attract readers.
Only in the second edition, published in 1831, did Mary Shelley finally receive the recognition she deserved.
Behind the gothic horror and moral questions about science and creation, the story of Frankenstein is rooted in a world literally darkened by nature. The bleak European summer that inspired Mary was a direct result of the eruption of Mount Tambora, an explosion so massive that its effects were felt halfway across the globe.
The British astronomer Richard B. Stothers described in The Great Tambora Eruption of 1815 and Its Aftermath (1984) how “European skies were darkened by volcanic dust for months”. The strange twilight that haunted Mary Shelley’s world became the perfect setting for her haunting imagination.
Two centuries later, Frankenstein continues to captivate audiences. The tale of Victor Frankenstein and his creation has evolved through countless adaptations from stage plays to Hollywood films.
The newest version, Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, released on Netflix in November 2025, reimagines the story with Oscar Isaac, Mia Goth, and Jacob Elordi.
