The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave,
The moon, their mistress, had expir’d before;
The winds were wither’d in the stagnant air,
And the clouds perish’d; Darkness had no need
Of aid from them—She was the Universe.
– Darkness, Lord Byron.
On a summer holiday in landlocked Switzerland, Lord Byron and his guests, Percy and Mary Shelly, found themselves stuck in a lakeside villa on a cold dark June day. Switzerland then was a grim picture. Crops had failed, and the people starved. “It is terrifying to see these walking skeletons devour the most repulsive foods with such avidity,” read a priest’s account.
The English tourists huddled in the warmth of the villa and exchanged terrifying tales to lift the mood. In this gloom, 18-year-old Marry Shelly wrote the Frankenstein, and Byron penned The Vampyre, and his vivid poem, Darkness.
A year later, across the continent, a cholera pandemic broke out in India, and spread to the Dutch East Indies, killing millions.
So, what connection did three landmark works of gothic literature have to do with a deadly pandemic half a world away?
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