on the shores of the lake of Como
Today, Switzerland and Italy share access to Lake Como as they do to the larger Lago
Maggiore somewhat to its west. The Shelleys and Claire Clairmont stopped at Lake Como in
the spring of 1818 and, they
claimed, would have settled there had they been able to find suitable
lodgings. In the event, their fortunes led them further south, and Mary
Shelley herself was not to return to the fabled beauty of these
surroundings until well after the revised edition of Frankenstein
was published. She obviously returned there frequently in her imagination.
It is on Lake Como that the small remnant of survivors for a time is able
to reestablish a human community in The Last Man, her novel of 1826. Years later, her lengthy
sojourn in the vicinity of Lake Como during the summer of 1840 is lovingly recorded in her
Rambles in Germany and Italy
published in 1844.
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