In The Year They Were Born—1792

      A person born in 1792 would have been twenty-six years old in 1818—which roughly corresponds with the age of my heroes and heroines. So I wondered what the world events were at the time.
      Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman was published, and Percy Bysshe Shelley was born. In 1816 Shelley would marry Wollstonecraft's daughter, the author of Frankenstein.
       Beethoven had met Haydn almost two years earlier and in 1792 had traveled to Vienna to study with him, but Beethoven had his own ideas about his music and didn't learn as much as he'd hoped.
      Joshua Reynolds, one of the most prominent artists of his day, passed away, leaving behind a legacy of portraits.
       The people of Paris weren't concentrating on art, but of survival. In August, Parisians marched on the royal residence and forced their way inside. 
       Political upheaval was in the air.
       King Gustav III of Sweden went to a masked ball after receiving a death threat. The assassin was also at the masquerade and mortally wounded Gustav.
       The events of 1792 created a climate that led the way for both the romanticism of Percy Bysshe Shelley and his future wife's creation of a monster made from spare parts.     
       

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