Regarding "Darkness", Lord Byron HAD experienced a somewhat apocalyptic event then: the 1816 Year Without a Summer, a volcanic winter from a major eruption the year before (Mt Tambora 1815 in Indonesia). Crops failed all over eastern North America and western Europe due to cold and/or wet weather, monsoons were disrupted and late in Indi…
Regarding "Darkness", Lord Byron HAD experienced a somewhat apocalyptic event then: the 1816 Year Without a Summer, a volcanic winter from a major eruption the year before (Mt Tambora 1815 in Indonesia). Crops failed all over eastern North America and western Europe due to cold and/or wet weather, monsoons were disrupted and late in India and southeast Asia, China had major floods on the Yangtze River system, Brazil had a major drought, and different parts of tropical Africa had significantly wetter or drier weather than usual.
And in Switzerland, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Shelley, John William Polidori, and some of their friends had rented a villa for the summer. But continual cold and wet weather kept them indoors, and inspired storytelling among these creative people. Not only did Byron's "Darkness" come out of it, but so did much of Mary Shelley's _Frankenstein_ (especially the chases through cold and mists in the Arctic), and a Lord Byron "Fragment" that later inspired Polidori's _The Vampyre_.
Regarding "Darkness", Lord Byron HAD experienced a somewhat apocalyptic event then: the 1816 Year Without a Summer, a volcanic winter from a major eruption the year before (Mt Tambora 1815 in Indonesia). Crops failed all over eastern North America and western Europe due to cold and/or wet weather, monsoons were disrupted and late in India and southeast Asia, China had major floods on the Yangtze River system, Brazil had a major drought, and different parts of tropical Africa had significantly wetter or drier weather than usual.
And in Switzerland, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Shelley, John William Polidori, and some of their friends had rented a villa for the summer. But continual cold and wet weather kept them indoors, and inspired storytelling among these creative people. Not only did Byron's "Darkness" come out of it, but so did much of Mary Shelley's _Frankenstein_ (especially the chases through cold and mists in the Arctic), and a Lord Byron "Fragment" that later inspired Polidori's _The Vampyre_.