The Outcasts by Sarah Stegall

The Outcasts by Sarah Stegall is a historical novel about a famous literary event that occurred during a three day weekend in the summer of 1816.  The story takes place in the Villa Diodati in Lake Geneva, Switzerland where Lord Byron and his friend Dr. John Polodori are staying.  In a house nearby resides Percy and Mary Shelley and Mary's step-sister Claire Clairmont.  The weather has been bad and so Byron invites the Shelleys and Claire to his villa.  After dinner Byron challenges his friends to write a ghost story and 18 year old Mary Shelley in response to a vision she has that night will begin writing Frankenstein, one of the great classics of English literature.

But what else happened during that famous weekend?  Sarah Stegall has done a very nice job filling us in.  She lets us know through Mary Shelley's eyes what Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Polodori and Claire Clarmont must have been like and what Mary was like as well. 

Lord Byron age 29 is the oldest member of the group but he is no role model.  Claire Clairmont, Mary's step-sister, is 17.   Claire regards Byron as her soul mate and she is sure he will feel the same once she tells him about her pregnancy.  Mary tries to get Claire to see reality but there is no reasoning with Claire.  Meanwhile John Polodari has dreams of running off with Mary which is futile since she only has eyes for Percy.

And that is the one relationship, Percy and Mary Shelley, that is working out.  But there are some difficulties.  The Shelleys are unable to go back to England because two years prior Percy (who was already married) eloped with Mary taking Claire with them since she wanted to be part of the adventure. Percy loves Mary but a part of her cannot help but worry.  Percy is a believer in free love and other revolutionary ideas.  He left his first wife to elope with Mary, might he one day get tired of Mary as well?  What would Mary do, a single mother on her own, with no family since her father, the radical philosopher William Godwin, has disowned her.  

Percy and Mary have an infant son William but they still grieve for their first born daughter who only lived eleven days.  In a moving passage in The Outcasts Percy goes outside into the storm trying to catch lightening in a jar. Mary is frantic he will be killed.  But later she thinks about the lightening and wonders:

“I thought she was sleeping,” she whispered, lost in the memory. Shelley took her hands. “Our little one, our first. I thought she was asleep .... But in the morning, I knew she was dead. And the doctor said she died … of convulsions.” The tears started behind her eyes; her hands shook. Shelley gripped them firmly. “If we had known, if you’d been there, maybe with your … your jar. Maybe you could have revived her, maybe you could have saved her.” She kept her voice low, but it was not low enough. “I don’t know,” Shelley said. “I don’t think it would have worked. She was too frail, my love. Too early.”

I read this passage and another in which Mary writes a letter to her father that he won't answer and I could see what might have inspired Frankenstein, a classic about a doctor trying to reanimate life and a creature being rejected by his creator/parent.  

Sarah Stegall has done a fine job with The Outcasts and as a companion non-fiction work I also recommend The Young Romantics: The Shelleys, Byron and Other Tangled Lives by Daisy Hay.  Both books shine a light on the British Romantic era in literature, a period just before the Victorians, that extended from 1785 - 1832.  The Romantic era included such  great poets and writers as Mary Shelley, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron, William Blake,  John Keats to name just a few.  I plan to read more on this subject.