MARK NORTH: To a new world of gods and monsters

I have attached a text file for your blog, which I mentioned, with regards to my visit to Bournemouth, called ''To a new world of gods and monsters'' (a reference from the Universal Bride of Frankenstein film). I suggest you publish it on the 30th August to tie in with Mary's birthday.On another note you may be interested that our council may be naming a roundabout for our new relief road after Veasta - The Chesil Beach Monster :) http://www.dorsetecho.co.uk/news/8346919.Help_name_Weymouth_Relief_Road_roundabouts/

Few seaside towns can claim so many literary associations as Bournemouth: Oscar Wilde, J.R.R. Tolkien, Thomas Hardy and Robert Louis Stevenson. But perhaps the most famous of all literary shrines I was fortunate enough to visit earlier this year was in the cemetery of St Peters in the centre of Bournemouth, where Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, author of one of the most famous of all Gothic horror novels, Frankenstein, is buried.

Mary Shelley was born on this day in 30th August 1797 in Somers Town, London. She was the second daughter of feminist and writer Mary Wollstonecraft and political journalist William Godwin (who are aso interred in her grave). Her mother died shortly after Mary's birth from a haemorrhage sustained either during delivery or by the actions of the midwife. Unusual for girls at the time, Mary received an excellent education. She published her first poem at the age of ten.

Percy Bysshe Shelley and his first wife Harriet often visited Godwin's home and bookshop in London. At the age of 16 Mary eloped to France and then Switzerland with Shelley. During May of 1816, the couple travelled to Lake Geneva. Apparently inspired by a ghost tale contest among her friends Lord Byron, John William Polidori, and Claire Clairmont, Mary had what she called a waking dream that became the manuscript for her most famous work Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus.

It tells the story of Victor Frankenstein, a scientist who tries to create a living being for the good of humanity but instead produces a monster. Frankenstein creates his monster by assembling parts of dead bodies and activating the creature with electricity. The monster, which has no name in the book, is actually a gentle, intelligent creature. However, everyone fears and mistreats him because of his hideous appearance. Frankenstein rejects the monster and refuses to create a mate for him. The monster's terrible loneliness drives him to seek revenge by murdering Frankenstein's wife, brother, and best friend. Frankenstein dies while trying to track down and kill the monster, who disappears into the Arctic at the end of the novel.

Many films have been based on the character of Frankenstein's monster. Most are simply tales of horror and have little to do with the serious themes of Shelley's novel. These themes include the possible dangers involved in scientific experimentation with life and the suffering caused by judging people by their appearance.

Mary and Shelley married in 1816 after Shelley's first wife committed suicide by drowning. In 1818 the Shelleys left England for Italy. The Italian adventure was, however, blighted for Mary by the death of both her children - Clara, in Venice and their son Will died from malaria in Rome. Mary suffered a nervous breakdown after the deaths and almost died of a later miscarriage. It was followed by the birth of her only surviving child, Percy Florence Shelley. In July 1822, Percy Bysshe Shelley sailed up the Italian coast and was caught in a storm on his return. He drowned on July 8 along with his friend Edward Williams and a young boat attendant.

To support herself and her child, Mary wrote novels including Valperga (1823), The Last Man (1826), and the autobiographical Lodore (1835). She spent much of her life in promoting her late husband's work, including editing and annotating unpublished material. She returned to England, never to re-marry.

She died on 1st February 1851 in Chester Square, London, of what some suspect to be a brain tumour, before her to move to live with her son Percy Florence Shelley at Boscombe Manor. Her last book, sometimes considered her best work, was Maria, which was published posthumously. Her son brought his mothers remains to be interred in St Peter's churchyard in Bournemouth, along with Percy's heart, which was not originally buried with his body. It was retrieved from his funeral pyre by his friend Trelawny and kept by Shelley's wife Mary, pressed flat, in a copy of the poet's "Adonais" and was interred for the first time in Mary's tomb.

Across the road from St Peter's Church is the pub aptly called 'The Mary Shelley.' Apart the obvious references to Frankenstein and Universal Horror Films such as The Wolfman, Dracula and the Mummy, they also featured literary associations with the town during the late nineteenth century and earlier years of the twentieth century. Robert Louis Stevenson wrote The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and most of his novel Kidnapped from his house "Skerryvore" on the west cliff. Also J.R.R. Tolkien spent thirty years taking holidays in Bournemouth, staying in the same room at the Hotel Miramar, with a second room to write in. He eventually retired to the area in the 1960s with his wife Edith. Tolkien died in September 1973 at his home in Bournemouth and was buried in Oxfordshire.

What particularly caught my eye was a reference to someone I have admired since childhood: British Naturalist, Gerald Durrell, who I expect most readers of this blog will know from his work in wildlife preservation and his books describing his experiences with animals in his light-hearted stories.

After the Second World War Gerald Durrell was keeping his growing collection of animals, acquired during foreign expeditions, in his sister's garden in Bournemouth. He had been here as a young boy with his family in the early 1930s, after leaving India, where he was born in 1925. He spent most of his youth in Corfu where his love of animals became all-consuming. During 1948 he was staying in his sister Margo's boarding house in Bournemouth with his animal collection in the garden, and trying to establish his own zoo. It would be, he argued, an attraction for holiday-makers and residents alike: but the council disagreed, and turned down his application.

An alternative suggestion was to house his animals in one of Bournemouth Stores. Christmas was coming and an in-store zoo would draw shoppers. J. J.Allens, the furnishing showroom, which stood on the site which is now the pub 'Mary Shelley', took up the idea of housing his menagerie. Durrell's animals came in from the cold and spent Christmas in the basement here. Durrell was eventually able to set up his zoo on Jersey by renting and later buying a private estate on the island, where he had no need to obtain permission from bureaucrats.