‘A 200-year-old secret’: plaque to mark Bath’s hidden role in Frankenstein | Books | The Guardian

Sheila Hannon takes visitors to Bath on a Mary Shelley walk through the city.

In December 1816, a teenager wrote to her lover from a lodging house in Bath that she had finished the fourth chapter of her book, “a very long one and I think you would like it”.

This year marks the bicentenary of the publication of that book, Frankenstein – famous in its day and ever since, interpreted in art, film, comics, ballet and music. The almost forgotten link between its creation and the city of Bath will be marked for the first time by a plaque to be unveiled on Tuesday.

Mary Godwin – child of the feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, who died 10 days after her daughter’s birth, and the radical writer and campaigner William Godwin – wrote much of the book during months living in Bath while her life was scarred by traumatic events >>

Source: ‘A 200-year-old secret’: plaque to mark Bath’s hidden role in Frankenstein | Books | The Guardian