*Shelley thought of the idea during the “year without a summer,” the apocalyptic conditions in Europe that followed the eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia. Incessant rain confined Shelley and her clique—including Percy Shelley and Lord Byron—to a villa overlooking Lake Geneva. They competed to produce the most frightening story. As well as being influenced by Galvanism, Shelley’s vision of a monster who was a homeless, friendless outcast may have echoed her experience of seeing starving peasants roaming from village to village in search of food. The same grim exposure to this suffering inspired the young Justus von Liebig to a life dedicated to preventing hunger.