I lived principally in the country as a girl
For whatever reason of self-presentation or nostalgia, Mary Shelley here
magnifies her love of and accessibility to an untrammelled natural
environment. Her Scottish experiences occupied less than two years of her
early adolescence. Prior to that time she was brought up in Somers Town,
in that day located on the edge of the London metropolis, where she could
divide her interests between the countryside to the north, upon which her
father's house looked out, and the attractions of the city. Godwin's
house itself was anything but rural, maintaining an intensely urban and
intellectually sophisticated ambience throughout Mary Shelley's youth.
There, as a child, she came into contact with dozens of the principal
luminaries of British culture at the beginning of the nineteenth century.
One of these was Samuel Taylor
Coleridge, whom she heard recite "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,"
a poem of particular resonance for Frankenstein, where it is
quoted twice -- (see Letter 2.5 and 1.4.4) -- and frequently functions
allusively: see, for instance, 3.1.3.
