On this day: Literary History
Monday, 16th June 2014 by Ian Brown
June 16, 1816, was a rather important day in literary history. At the Villa Diodati in Switzerland, Lord Byron and his guests were forced to stay inside by "incessant rain", so he read his story Fantasmagoriana, and then issued a challenge to the others to write similarly fantastical stories. Mary Shelley started work on what would become Frankenstein, and John Polidori The Vampyre.
About the author
Ian Brown lives in Ottawa, Canada, and spends his spare time perusing maps to find new routes to ride on his orange bicycle.
This odd weather they experienced was related to the eruption of Mt. Tambora in Indonesia; 1816 was famously referred to as the “Year without a Summer”.
More here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Without_a_Summer