Mary Shelley published Frankenstein anonymously in 1818. She was later credited for her work, but the book's origin story is just as interesting as the novel itself. In the "year without a summer" of 1816, Mary joined her husband Percy and Lord Byron for a weekend away, where the scared each other with ghost tales. They came up with a challenge to see who could write the creepiest story of their own, and Frankenstein was born. I sat down with Rachael Marsay, the Roy Davids Archivist of Modern Literary Archives and Manuscripts at the Bodleian Libraries, to discuss the creation of this gothic classic.

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