Mary Shelley had a reason for all the geographical locations she used throughout 'Frankenstein.'

Odds are you've seen a Frankenstein movie at some point in your life. Lots of  flat heads and staggering monsters that mumble "Braaaains..." while finding some human utterly delicious looking.

Mary Shelley's book, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (yeah, that was the full title), was actually quite a world traveler of a text though, with a highly verbose monster who jaunted around Europe while occasionally causing murderous mayhem.

This wannabe jet-set lifestyle of Frankenstein has led The Smithsonian Magazine to detail the variety of real-life geographical locations that likely inspired Shelley. These locations include Castle Frankenstein in Germany (for obvious reasons) and Bolgna, Italy (where physician Luigi Galvani once used electricity to charge dead frogs in 1781), to Chamonix, France (where Shelley vacationed) and the Orkney Islands, Scotland (near where a teenage Mary spent two years of her life).

The real fun fact to be learned? The novel includes Spezia, Italy, as a location the monster visits. Spezia is nearby a location where Shelley's husband, famed poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, would later die by drowning when his sailboat capsized during a storm four years after Frankenstein's publication.

So the monster was STILL alive after all.

Mary Shelley's original Frankenstein looked more like Gothic beefcake than horror creature.

A new exhibition at the British Library is revealing the earliest known illustration of the monster in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and he wasn't half bad looking

The exhibition entitled 'Terror and Wonder: The Gothic Imagination,' showcases an illustration from the 1831 edition of Shelley's classic novel, with Frankenstein sans bolts, flat-top head, and brick house physique.

Instead, Shelley's semi-nude monster looks like he belongs on the cover of a Harlequin romance, minus his face of sheer terror.

As Greg Buzwell, the British Library curator, tells The Telegraph, "In the book, the Creature is almost sympathetic. In the film, although we do get the sense he is misunderstood, the intention was to have a character who was quite frightening - hence the beefed-up physique, the clumpy boots, the macabre stitches and the bolts through the neck. He became a menacing figure. The Creature in the 1831 illustration is fairly close to what Shelley had in mind."

What Shelley had in mind was a creature with "lustrous" black hair, not the buzzcut shellac look popularized at Halloween we see today.

In essence, Frankenstein was really the Fabio of his time.

The exhibition opens October 3, 2014.

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