An ancient city of Scotland, Perth was the Scottish capital until the mid-fifteenth
century, when Edinburgh succeeded it: the old parlimentary building was not, in fact,
razed until the year of Frankenstein's publication. The city is located on the river
Tay some twenty miles southwest of Dundee, where Mary Shelley spent nearly two years
-- from June 1812 to March 1814 -- at the home of the Baxter family.