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.