Halloween Special 2026: Things to do in Geneva when it rains

Professor Jane Jarman, NLS https://www.ntu.ac.uk/staff-profiles/law/jane-jarman

As Halloween approaches, a frantic wardrobe scramble often ensues for the fashion conscious trick-or-treater. What to wear? Amid the myriad costumes available, two perennial favourites stand out… Frankenstein and Dracula. You really cannot go wrong. In terms of brand recognition, they lead the retail pack, with suitable accoutrements and trinkets available for purchase. Some fake fangs or a couple of neck bolts, and you are good to go.

Incidentally, the Frankenstein neck bolts were not a feature of the original story. By the time they appeared in the 1931 Boris Karloff classic, Frankenstein, the story was happily in the public domain. The unique visuals developed for the film would be protected by the studio around the world for decades. The enforcement of those rights would fill more than another blog.  

For the intellectual property lawyer, the development of the Frankenstein franchise is a source of interesting material on which to gnaw - how ideas emerge, are developed, protected and, sometimes, are resurrected. Here, there is time to focus on just one aspect: the creative process at the heart of a story written over 200 years ago as part of a holiday dare. It all sounds strikingly modern, with elements common to many a copyright dispute. When challenged, how does a writer prove their claim to authorship?

The context: It was a dark and stormy summer

A trip to Switzerland in June 1816 alongside her soon to be husband, the poet Percy Shelley, Lord Byron and his physician, Dr John Polidori, turned into something of a holiday from hell for the author of Frankenstein, Mary Shelley. 1816 is often referred to as the year without a summer; the eruption of the volcano, Mount Tambora, in Indonesia in 1815, resulted in attendant gloom the following year. It was a summer of seemingly endless rain, gloom, and thunderstorms. The perfect Gothic atmosphere for the novel in which a creature, an artificial human, becomes conscious in a lightning storm.   

Stranded on the banks of Lake Geneva in the rain, albeit in a rather salubrious villa, Lord Byron challenged the assembled throng to write a ghost story. No pressure at all – just a literary gauntlet thrown down by one of the most celebrated poets of the age.  Whilst Shelley and Byron seem to have dialled out of the challenge at an early stage, Mary Shelley, and Dr John Polidori focused on the task with a greater sense of purpose. Polidori, against his rather tepid run of form in literary matters, produced a short story, The Vampyre, which would prove to be an inspiration for Bram Stoker’s Dracula some years later. However, it was Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein: Or the Modern Prometheus, which would prove, over time, to be the most enduring and profitable of franchises, although not always for Mary herself.

Even before the ink was dry, questions of authorship emerged. Mary Shelley and Polidori did not help themselves, not least by holidaying with two famous writers and then publishing the pieces on an anonymous basis. However, the way in which they defended their work has a very modern resonance and provides a useful insight into the creative process.  

So, did you really write this?

There is a lasting irony in that the poetic superstars seem to have abandoned the challenge, save for a small ‘Fragment’ penned by Byron, and yet it was assumed that Frankenstein and The Vampyre must have been their work. 

Polidori was the most irritated.  At least one publisher went as far as to state it was ‘A Tale by Lord Byron,’ no doubt with an eye to the potential increase in sales. Polidori felt compelled to set the record straight in a letter to New Monthly Magazine, which had published the story on 1 April 1819,  

“As the person referred to in the letter from Geneva prefixed to the Tale of ‘The Vampyre’ in your last number, I beg to state that your correspondent has been mistaken in attributing that tale, in its present form, to Lord Byron. The fact is, that through the groundwork is certainly Lord Byron’s its development is mine….”

Polidori’s emphasis on the tale ‘in its current form’ and the reference to ‘the groundwork’ demonstrate the careful drafting of a lawyer, a profession followed by the writer before he switched to medicine. Polidori is slicing and dicing the creative process in an effort to claim rights to the tale ‘in its present form’. He acknowledges discussion and inspiration, but claims ‘its development’. 

Mary Shelley fared little better, with Frankenstein being attributed to her husband, the poet Percy Shelley.  Frankenstein was published anonymously in 1818, with a Preface by the poet, and many assumed it to be his work. However, Mary Shelley’s introduction to a new edition of her story in 1831 made her claim to authorship clear,

“I certainly did not owe the suggestion of one incident, nor scarcely of one train of feeling, to my husband, and yet but for his incitement it would never have taken the form in which it was presented to the world. From this declaration I must except the preface. As far as I can recollect, it was written entirely by him.”

The 1831 Introduction proves to be something of a ‘witness statement’ in detailing the creative process. Stranded in the driving rain of an ‘ungenial summer,’ Mary recounts that ‘some volumes of ghost stories fell into our hands’.  Mary’s account is corroborated in the 1818 Preface in which Percy Shelley states that ‘[t]hese tales excited us in a playful desire of imitation’.  Yet, in stating that she ‘did not owe the suggestion of one incident’ to anyone else, the comment ‘as far as I can recollect’ points to the messy creative process.

This co-authorship conundrum is at the heart of many an intellectual property dispute, and the question: ‘so, did you write this on your own?’ may often receive an equivocal answer, such as ‘kind of… my friends helped, and I saw a film or read a book…’.

The spectre of potential co-authorship disputes, as well as the need for licensing clearance, is sufficient to frighten the most stoic of intellectual property specialists on Halloween.  The potential difficulties of attribution, as well as the complex creative context, seem remarkably modern and no less challenging to disentangle. Where does inspiration stop and collaboration start? Both Mary Shelley and John Polidori were both alert to the need to assert their rights as authors and to say, unequivocally, ‘this is mine!’ However, both acknowledged help from others that may have kindled the spark of ingenuity.

It’s Alive!

When Mary Shelley wrote in the 1831 Introduction, ‘And now, once again, I bid my hideous progeny go forth and prosper,’ she could not have imagined the retail and entertainment franchise she had jolted into life. Actually, possibly, she did.

Mary received about £30 for the first edition in 1818, and was tempted by a further payment, with suitable alterations to the text and an introduction, for the Standard Novels Edition in 1831. Another £30 and, perhaps, some royalties, as well as an introduction that now serves as a fascinating quasi witness statement of the creative process at work in the gloomy summer of 1816.

Today, the Frankenstein brand is very much alive, albeit the progeny of different sources. Even the ubiquity of ‘Franken’ as a prefix, from “Frankenfoods” to “Frankencrops,” has come to signal anything that might scare us in the night: the progeny of unnatural origin.

A brief search of the UK Intellectual Property Trade Mark Register records over 40 registered trade marks for a variety of goods and services, from alcohol to retail services and entertainment with ‘Franken’ as a prefix. Some trade marks are recorded as ‘dead,’ which, in the context of Frankenstein, appears to be something of an affront.

Much of the popular perception of ‘the monster’ is a product of the Boris Karloff film version in the 1930s. There have been other ‘tweaks’ at work. Frankenstein is the name of the doctor, not the name of the creature. No electricity or lightning bolt animated the creature in the original, and nobody says, ‘It’s alive!’ Considerable licence was accorded to the filmmakers as Mary Shelley focused on the inner turmoil and the nature of being rather than the look of the creature; hence the iconic neck bolts of the 1930s. Just like Polidori and Mary Shelley herself, there was enough latitude to allow others to assert, ‘this bit is mine!’. 

Mary Shelley’s holiday novel has demonstrated its ability to ‘go forth and prosper’ as she hoped, often by reinterpretation and reimagining as various rights holders navigate the choppy waters of intellectual property law.  Rights are established, extinguished, and reconfigured. Frankenstein is very much alive, albeit often far removed from the original novel, much to the relief of the fashion conscious trick-or-treater searching for appropriate Halloween attire.

Further Reading;

Mary Shelley, Frankenstein: Or the Modern Prometheus (Penguin Classics, 2003). This version includes both the 1818 and 1831 texts and introduction, as well as Polidori’s The Vampyre.