"Insensitive and ruthless Creator...! You gave me sensations and passions, and then you threw me into the world to be despised and horrified by humanity."

That "damp and unpleasant summer" of 1816 "I entertained myself by thinking of a story that would make the reader afraid to look around, that would freeze their blood and quicken their heartbeat," Mary Shelley in the introduction to the 1831 edition on how Frankenstein was forged.