Detail from a hand-colored engraving of Byron’s Villa Diodati on the shores of Lake Geneva, by Edward Francis Finden, ca. 1833, after a drawing by William Purser.

Featured on PDR in the essay Frankenstein, the Baroness, and the Climate Refugees of 1816

It is two hundred years since "The Year Without a Summer", when a sun-obscuring ash cloud — ejected from one of the most powerful volcanic eruptions in recorded history — caused temperatures to plummet the world over. Gillen D’Arcy Wood looks at the humanitarian crisis triggered by the unusual weather, and how it offers an alternative lens through which to read Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, a book begun in its midst.

Villa Diodati

Artist

Date

ca. 1833


Underlying Rights

Public Domain Worldwide

Digital Rights

No Additional Rights


Image Size

677 x 570 Higher res available?

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