World

The Summer Storm That Inspired Frankenstein and Dracula

BI-SIN-TENNIAL

A volcano exploding on the far side of the world and a disastrous love affair in Europe created just the climate needed for the undead to flourish.

articles/2016/09/03/the-summer-storm-that-inspired-frankenstein-and-dracula/160902-zaleski-frankenstein-dracula-tease_hyv1be
Columbia Pictures/Everett Collection

PARIS — It was, yes, a dark and stormy night two centuries ago. Indeed, it was a dark and stormy summer—so dark, so stormy, that those who lived through it remembered 1816 as the year with no summer at all.

But on one long night the horror that 18-year-old Mary Wollstonecraft...

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