The novel Frankenstein was written for a contest.
According to Listverse.com, in the summer of 1816, Mary Godwin, her lover Percy Bysshe Shelley, John William Polidori, and Claire Clairmont (Mary’s step-sister) visited Lord Byron in Geneva, Switzerland.
The idea was to relax and enjoy the mild Swiss summer, but that summer was especially dreary.
Unable to enjoy the outdoors, the group mostly read German ghost stories to entertain themselves. It was that reading that inspired Byron to propose that the group write their own supernatural stories and see who could come up with the best one, according to List Verse.
Byron wrote only fragments. Polidori really didn’t come up with anything, but came up with something later based on Byron’s ideas.
Mary retired for the evening and had a dream of a corpse that came back to life. Based on that dream she wrote Frankenstein. Percy concentrated on facilitating his soon-to-be-wife’s story. She imagined it as a short story, and wrote the first few chapters in a relatively short time, List Verse stated.
With Percy’s encouragement and editing, she fleshed out the story over the next year or so and turned it into a full-fledged novel.
“Frankenstein” isn’t a random name either, and in the book, Frankenstein talks. Read more: ListVerse.com