In 2023, I developed a proposal for my first non fiction book, Fine Bogey Tales, which explores Scotland’s horror roots and how its landscape, history, ghost stories and folklore has inspired generations of writers from Shakespeare and Bram Stoker to Robert Louis Stevenson, Mary Shelley and Robert Burns. The initial research of this project was kindly supported by Creative Scotland. Sadly, the book never found a publishing home, but I’m delighted to share a sample chapter with you below…
Sample Chapter of Fine Bogey Tales: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, Banks of the River Tay, Dundee
“Beware, for I am fearless and therefore powerful. I will watch with the wiliness of a snake, that I may sting with its venom. Man, you shall repent of the injuries you inflict.”
Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
I was an adult when I learned that Frankenstein author Mary Shelley and I had something in common. Despite growing up in Dundee and working there for most of my adult life, I’d never heard about Mary’s connection to the city. Famous for its jute, jam and journalism, the UNESCO city of design, is home to a prestigious theatre and art institution as well as being the first place outside of London to house a V&A museum. But despite the City of Discovery’s reputation for fostering and championing creative talent, Mary Shelley’s time here, feels almost forgotten.
Dundee seems like a strange place for the daughter of noted philosopher William Godwin and the feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft, to live. Born in 1797, Mary Shelley, or Mary Godwin as she was known then, was raised over 400 miles away in Middlesex and had no real link to the city.
Mary was just fourteen years old when she was sent to live at ‘The Cottage’, in Dundee’s South Baffin Street, one of the key settings in her novel, Frankenstein. By the time she reached the city, the teenager had already endured much trauma in her short life. Wollstonecraft died, just ten days after giving birth to her daughter Mary – an event that had a profound effect on the Frankenstein author. Young Mary longed for her mother and grew up in awe of her radical ideals. She learned how to read by tracing the inscription on Wollstonecraft’s grave and her early reading material included her mother’s book: Original Stories from Real Life. Mary would turn to her mother’s words again and again during her life, learning many of the passages of Wollstonecraft’s work off by heart.
When Mary’s father remarried in 1801, his new wife, Mary Jane Clairmont already had two children of her own. Sadly, Mary’s new stepmother was no match for the absent mother she yearned for. Mary Jane was a formidable presence in the young girl’s life and seemed threatened by her stepdaughter’s relationship with Godwin. This created an air of hostility in the family home and distance between father and daughter.
“I am malicious because I am miserable. Am I not shunned and hated by all mankind? You, my creator, would tear me to pieces and triumph; remember that, and tell me why I should pity man more than he pities me?”
– Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
The official reason given for Mary’s extended trip North in 1812, was to give the teenager time to recuperate from an ailment to her arm, which could be treated with frequent sea bathing. Today, however, it is believed that the real purpose of this visit was to ease rising tensions between Mary and her stepmother.
Mary’s abode in Dundee was the home of textile manufacturer William Thomas Baxter, who was a great admirer of her father’s work. Mary would live at the house, alongside Baxter’s seven children, which included two sons and five daughters.
As I make my way along Broughty Ferry Road with its crumbling walls and council houses, towards the site of ‘The Cottage’ on South Baffin Street, I wonder how Mary felt when she arrived in Dundee, a place so far away from home. The trip from Ramsgate to Dundee took six days by boat, and Mary was known to suffer from extreme sea sickness. In fact, in the letter from Godwin to Baxter, Mary’s father predicted that his daughter would probably be “more dead than alive,” when she arrived, after being “shipped off” to him by “yesterday’s packet.” In the same letter, he said this of his daughter’s nature:
“I believe she has nothing of what is commonly called vices, and that she has considerable talent [… ]I hope you will be aware that I do not desire that she should be treated with extraordinary attention, or that any one of your family should put themselves in the smallest degree out of their way on her account. I am anxious that she should be brought up (in this respect) like a philosopher, even like a cynic. It will add greatly to the strength and worth of her character. I should also observe that she has no love of dissipation, and will be perfectly satisfied with your woods and your mountains. I wish, too, that she should be excited to industry. She has occasionally great perseverance, but occasionally, too, she shows great need to be roused.”
And roused she was. Mary found her stay in the city freeing and enjoyed the experience immensely. Being away from home gave her the time and space she required to foster her own creativity and it was also good for her in other ways too. She felt at home with the family and developed two important and long-lasting friendships there with Baxter’s daughters, Isabella and Christy (Christina).
Sadly, ‘The Cottage’, which was originally built for the Dowager Countess of Strathmore, is now long gone. The substantial building has now been replaced by a forbidding looking set of concrete stairs, nicknamed Frankenstein’s Steps by locals. The area is surrounded by a number of tenement buildings, many of which are owned by the local council. The only thing that marks Mary’s link to the city is a small bronze plaque which reads: On this site stood the cottage (mentioned in Frankenstein). Visited by Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin 1812 – 1814.
Her temporary home in Dundee was a beautiful one. The substantial property, which is surrounded by up to four acres of land of lawn and garden, is surrounded by a lush wood. Mary’s base in the city was a sharp contrast to her view out to the cold treacherous water, where whaling ships departed for Arctic waters every April. Perhaps, it was the experience of gazing out to the River Tay that gave Mary the idea of concluding her novel in the Arctic, a place of “frost and desolation”, where Victor Frankenstein would die, pursuing the creature he brought to life.
“His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same colour as the dun-white sockets in which they were set, his shrivelled complexion and straight black lips.” – Victor Frankenstein on his creation.
Mary had two stays at ‘The Cottage’ in total. The first lasting five months, and the second lasting almost 10. She left for the final time in 1814 to return to London, where she met Percy Bysshe Shelley, the Romantic poet who became the love of her life. Percy was already married but the pair ran off to Europe together. It was during this time that Mary would begin to write her magnum opus, during her well documented stay at Villa Diodati.
Mary, her partner Percy, her stepsister Claire Clairmont, Lord Byron and Byron’s doctor, John William Polidori, gathered at the Villa on the shores of Lake Geneva. The weather was unseasonably dreich, so much so, that the papers nicknamed 1816 as ‘the year without a summer’. The treacherous conditions outside meant that the group had to spend much of their trip indoors. To pass the time, Lord Byron decided to set them all a challenge, declaring: “We will each write a ghost story.”
This challenge and the sublimely Gothic stormy weather outside, proved to be all the impetus that 18-year-old Mary needed. She sat down and began penning her trail blazing science fiction novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, a horrifying novel which explores the consequences of ‘god-like science’ arrogance and human cruelty.
Mary was not the only one to successfully create a ‘fine bogey tale’ during the stay. Byron’s doctor, John Polidori also struck upon a compelling idea and began work on his novel The Vampyre, a book that is said to have inspired Bram Stoker to write Dracula.
In the 1831 preface of Frankenstein, Mary says this of her experiences at Villa Diodati.
“I busied myself to think of a story,” she wrote, “- a story to rival those which had excited us to this task. One which would speak to the mysterious fears of our nature and awaken thrilling horror – one to make the reader dread to look round, to curdle the blood and quicken the beatings of the heart.”
And she did exactly that. Mary brought both the arrogant doctor Victor Frankenstein and his unloved creation, to life on the page, working tirelessly on the novel for two years. She published it anonymously in 1818 at the age of 20.
Frankenstein caused shockwaves around the literary world, who did not approve of this progressive tale. One review described it as ’tissue of horrible and disgusting absurdity’. Another said that it ‘inculcates no lesson of conduct, manners, or morality.’ It’s little wonder that Mary did not take the credit for the book until 1823. The horrifying nature of the novel and the fact that Mary’s partner Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote the original foreword of the book, made many people speculate that Frankenstein was in fact written by him – a notion which has since been dismissed by historians.
“It is true, we shall be monsters, cut off from all the world; but on that account we shall be more attached to one another. Our lives will not be happy, but they will be harmless and free from the misery I now feel. Oh! My creator, make me happy; let me feel gratitude towards you for one benefit! Let me see that I excite the sympathy of some existing thing…”
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
On rereading Frankenstein in preparation for writing this book, I am struck by just how modern the novel feels, but also by its profound bleakness. This tale, which explores the cruelty of man and what happens to us when we are abandoned by our creators, feels like it’s been written by someone much older – someone who has been jaded by life’s trials and tribulations. I ask myself how a teenage girl could create something so dark, so cutting edge, so transformative, so harrowing, but the answer is obvious. The darkness comes from Mary’s own life – one that had already been filled with much heartache and trauma.
Just like Frankenstein’s creature, Mary’s life had been full of loss and pain – not only had she had to endure the loss of her mother and being pushed away by her father, she also had to bear the heartbreak of losing her babies too. When she sat down to write the first incarnation of Frankenstein, at Villa Diodati, she had just given birth to her son William. One year earlier, she’d given birth to a baby girl, who only lived a few days. In a diary entry, Mary demonstrates the devastating effect this loss had on her:
“Sunday, March 19.—Dream that my little baby came to life again; that it had only been cold, and that we rubbed it before the fire, and it lived. Awake and find no baby. I think about the little thing all day.”
Sadly, Mary would go on to lose many of her children. Out of the five pregnancies she experienced during her lifetime, only one of Mary’s children would make it into adulthood. Perhaps this is why the author felt compelled to write about the fragility of life and consequences of bringing the dead back.
But while her many losses and the time she spent at Villa Diodati, provided her with the stimulus she needed to create Frankenstein and his creature, Scotland’s influence on the novel is undeniable. Not only does she feature ‘The Cottage’ the place where the creature observes love and kindness for the first time, she also explores the island of Orkney in the book, the location where the creature begs Victor Frankenstein to bring the dead back to life once more, to ease his profound loneliness.
In the novel, she reveals her fondness for Scotland in this semi-autobiographical paragraph, which is narrated by Victor.
“After passing some months in London, we received a letter from a person in Scotland who had formerly been our visitor at Geneva. He mentioned the beauties of his native country and asked us if those were not sufficient allurements to induce us to prolong our journey as far north as Perth, where he resided. […] I […] wished to view again mountains and streams and all the wondrous works with which Nature adorns her chosen dwelling-places.”
But it is the city of Dundee itself, that had the biggest impact on her. In fact, in the introduction of the 1831 edition of the book, Mary wrote the following ode to the city.
“I lived principally in the country as a girl, and passed a considerable time in Scotland. I made occasional visits to the more picturesque parts; but my habitual residence was on the blank and dreary northern shores of the Tay, near Dundee. Blank and dreary on retrospection I call them; they were not so to me then. They were the eyry of freedom, and the pleasant region where unheeded I could commune with the creatures of my fancy. I wrote then – but in a most common-place style.
“It was beneath the trees of the grounds belonging to our house, or on the bleak sides of the woodless mountains near, that my true compositions, the airy flights of my imagination, were born and fostered. I did not make myself the heroine of my tales. Life appeared to me too common-place an affair as regarded myself. I could not figure to myself that romantic woes or wonderful events would ever be my lot; but I was not confined to my own identity, and I could people the hours with creations far more interesting to me at that age, than my own sensations.”
As I take in Frankenstein’s steps, I reflect on Mary’s words. I too found the city to be blank and dreary whilst growing up. The grey stone buildings and the ferocious North Sea can make the place feel dispiriting and dreary. And yet, just like Mary, I find that this monotonous blankness provides me with the space that I need, to think freely and create.
Today, the view down to the sea is blocked by factories and construction sites, but if you go up the steps and stand on your tiptoes, you can still catch a glimpse of the ‘dreary northern shores of the Tay’. I walk to the water; along Broughty Ferry Road and down the steep incline of Market Street and towards the shore, just like Mary must have. When I reach the banks of the Tay, seagulls swoop across the coast as Har descends, almost completely obscuring my view across the River.
With conditions like these, it’s easy to let your imagination run wild, and as I peer through the gloom, I feel like I catch a glimpse of something making its way across the water.
Perhaps it’s Shelley’s lonely and unloved creature desperately trying to reach a place of freedom– the same thing that his creator Mary Godwin Shelley, found in this city, more than 200 years ago.
Selected Sources
Gordon Bannerman, Kenneth Baxter, Daniel Cook & Matthew Jarron, Creatures of Fancy: Mary Shelley In Dundee (Abertay Historical Society, 2019)
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein: The 1818 Text (Penguin Books, 1818)
Charlotte Gordon, Introduction of Mary Shelley, Frankenstein: The 1818 Text (Penguin Books, 2018)
Fiona Sampson, In Search of Mary Shelley: The Girl Who Wrote Frankenstein (Profile Books, 2018)
Mary Shelley, Diary Entry, Sunday, March, 19th, 1815
Mary Shelley Wollstonecraft, The Journals of Mary Shelley (London 1889)
Carol Margaret Davison & Monica Germanà, Scottish Gothic, Edinburgh University Press, 2017