Spending Time With The Shelleys - A Travel Blog

I’ve long been captivated by the workspaces of famous writers. The Elephant House coffee shop in Edinburgh where J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter came to life, or Room 511 of Havana’s Hotel Ambos Mundos where Hemmingway’s typewriter, on which he hammered out The Old Man and the Sea, still sits. There is a certain resonance in such places. A subtle energy that awes and inspires. You feel it. Like a perfectly struck tuning fork whose tone never fully ceases to resonate.

I’ll soon be heading off to Tuscany, Italy with a special enthusiasm, having learned my Airbnb just outside of Pisa, Italy was once a few steps away from the apartment rented by Percy Bysshe and Mary Shelley from 1820 to 1822.

I plan on telling of my experience and discoveries in a weekly blog starting next month. Meanwhile I’m happy to share some interesting tidbits. Most notable perhaps is my learning of a nearby villa, often visited by the couple, where experiments in galvanism (the therapeutic use of electricity) were being carried out.

Now, while Mary Shelley had published Frankenstein in 1818, it is also known that this genius work continued to be refined over a period of several years. So I can’t help but think that whatever she gleaned while there did help, in some way, to inform any final tweaks.

Needless to say, I plan on visiting this establisment, now a restaurant, and reporting on my findings.