What Is Shelleys Purpose for Writing the Introduction to Frankenstein

1818 novel by Mary Shelley

Frankenstein;
or, The Modern Prometheus

Volume I, outset edition
Author	Mary Shelley
Country	Britain
Language	English
Genre	Gothic novel, horror fiction, science fiction[1]
Set in	England, Ireland, Italy, France, Scotland, Switzerland, Russian federation, Germany; late 18th century
Published	i January 1818; 204 years ago  (1818-01-01)
Publisher	Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor & Jones
Pages	280
Dewey Decimal	823.seven
LC Class	PR5397 .F7
Text	Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus at Wikisource

Frankenstein; or, The Mod Prometheus is an 1818 novel written past English language author Mary Shelley. Frankenstein tells the story of Victor Frankenstein, a young scientist who creates a sapient creature in an unorthodox scientific experiment. Shelley started writing the story when she was xviii, and the offset edition was published anonymously in London on one January 1818, when she was twenty. Her name offset appeared in the second edition, which was published in Paris in 1821.

Shelley travelled through Europe in 1815, moving forth the river Rhine in Frg, and stopping in Gernsheim, 17 kilometres (11 mi) away from Frankenstein Castle, where, two centuries before, an alchemist had engaged in experiments.^{[two] [three] [4]} She then journeyed to the region of Geneva, Switzerland, where much of the story takes identify. Galvanism and occult ideas were topics of conversation for her companions, especially for her lover and future husband Percy B. Shelley. In 1816 Mary, Percy and Lord Byron had a contest to see who could write the best horror story.^[five] After thinking for days, Shelley was inspired to write Frankenstein after imagining a scientist who created life and was horrified by what he had made.^[6]

Though Frankenstein is infused with elements of the Gothic novel and the Romantic motility, Brian Aldiss has argued for regarding it as the first true science-fiction story. In contrast to previous stories with fantastical elements resembling those of after science fiction, Aldiss states, the central character "makes a deliberate conclusion" and "turns to modern experiments in the laboratory" to achieve fantastic results.^[7] The novel has had a considerable influence on literature and on popular civilisation; information technology has spawned a complete genre of horror stories, films, and plays.

Since the publication of the novel, the name "Frankenstein" has ofttimes been used, erroneously, to refer to the monster, rather than to his creator/male parent.^{[8] [9] [10]}

The 1931 picture Frankenstein is considered every bit the most prominent example of movie theater portrayal of Frankenstein with Boris Karloff as the primary histrion.^[eleven]

Summary [edit]

Helm Walton's introductory narrative [edit]

Frankenstein is a frame story written in epistolary form. It documents a fictional correspondence between Captain Robert Walton and his sister, Margaret Walton Saville. The story takes place in the eighteenth century (the letters are dated as "17-"). Robert Walton is a failed writer who sets out to explore the North Pole in hopes of expanding scientific knowledge. During the voyage, the crew spots a dog sled driven by a gigantic figure. A few hours later, the crew rescues a nigh frozen and emaciated human being named Victor Frankenstein. Frankenstein has been in pursuit of the gigantic man observed by Walton's crew. Frankenstein starts to recover from his exertion; he sees in Walton the same obsession that has destroyed him and recounts a story of his life's miseries to Walton as a alarm. The recounted story serves as the frame for Frankenstein'south narrative.

Victor Frankenstein's narrative [edit]

Victor begins past telling of his childhood. Born in Naples, Italy, into a wealthy Genevan family, Victor and his younger brothers, Ernest and William, are sons of Alphonse Frankenstein and the quondam Caroline Beaufort. From a young age, Victor has a stiff desire to understand the world. He is obsessed with studying theories of alchemists, though when he is older he realizes that such theories are considerably outdated. When Victor is five years former, his parents adopt Elizabeth Lavenza (the orphaned girl of an expropriated Italian nobleman) whom Victor subsequently marries. Victor's parents later have in some other kid, Justine Moritz, who becomes William's nanny.

Weeks earlier he leaves for the University of Ingolstadt in Germany, his mother dies of scarlet fever; Victor buries himself in his experiments to deal with the grief. At the university, he excels at chemistry and other sciences, soon developing a undercover technique to impart life to non-living matter. He undertakes the creation of a humanoid, but due to the difficulty in replicating the minute parts of the human torso, Victor makes the Fauna tall, about viii feet (2.4 m) in height, and proportionally large. Despite Victor'southward selecting its features to be beautiful, upon animation the Creature is instead hideous, with watery white eyes and yellow skin that barely conceals the muscles and blood vessels underneath. Repulsed by his piece of work, Victor flees. While wandering the streets the next day, he meets his childhood friend, Henry Clerval, and takes Clerval back to his apartment, fearful of Clerval'south reaction if he sees the monster. Notwithstanding, when Victor returns to his laboratory, the Creature is gone.

Victor falls ill from the feel and is nursed back to health by Clerval. After a four-month recovery, he receives a letter from his male parent notifying him of the murder of his brother William. Upon arriving in Geneva, Victor sees the Creature well-nigh the crime scene and becomes convinced that his creation is responsible. Justine Moritz, William'southward nanny, is convicted of the crime later on William'due south locket, which contained a miniature portrait of Caroline, is found in her pocket. Victor knows that no one will believe him if he tries to clear Justine'south name, and she is hanged. Ravaged by grief and guilt, Victor retreats into the mountains. While he hikes through Mont Blanc's Mer de Slippery, he is all of a sudden approached by the Animal, who pleads for Victor to hear his tale.

The Creature'south narrative [edit]

Intelligent and clear, the Creature relates his outset days of life, living alone in the wilderness. He found that people were afraid of and hated him due to his advent, which led him to fear and hide from them. While living in an abandoned structure continued to a cottage, he grew fond of the poor family living at that place and discreetly nerveless firewood for them, cleared snow abroad from their path, and performed other tasks to help them. Secretly living next to the cottage for months, the Creature learned to speak by listening to them and taught himself to read later discovering a lost satchel of books in the woods. When he saw his reflection in a pool, he realized his advent was hideous, and it horrified him as much equally it horrified normal humans. As he continued to learn of the family'southward plight, he grew increasingly attached to them, and somewhen he approached the family in hopes of becoming their friend, inbound the business firm while only the blind father was present. The two conversed, only on the return of the others, the rest of them were frightened. The bullheaded homo's son attacked him and the Beast fled the house. The adjacent 24-hour interval, the family left their home out of fearfulness that he would return. The Creature was enraged by the way he was treated and gave up promise of ever being accepted past humans. Although he hated his creator for abandoning him, he decided to travel to Geneva to find him because he believed that Victor was the only person with a responsibility to aid him. On the journey, he rescued a child who had fallen into a river, but her father, believing that the Creature intended to harm them, shot him in the shoulder. The Creature then swore revenge against all humans. He travelled to Geneva using details from Victor's periodical, murdered William, and framed Justine for the crime.

The Creature demands that Victor create a female person companion similar himself. He argues that as a living existence, he has a right to happiness. The Creature promises that he and his mate volition vanish into the Southward American wilderness, never to reappear, if Victor grants his request. Should Victor reject, the Creature threatens to kill Victor's remaining friends and loved ones and not stop until he completely ruins him. Fearing for his family, Victor reluctantly agrees. The Creature says he volition scout over Victor's progress.

Victor Frankenstein's narrative resumes [edit]

Clerval accompanies Victor to England, but they separate, at Victor'southward insistence, at Perth, Scotland. Victor suspects that the Brute is post-obit him. Working on the female brute on Orkney, he is plagued past premonitions of disaster. He fears that the female volition hate the Animate being or go more evil than he is. Even more worrying to him is the thought that creating the second beast might lead to the breeding of a race that could plague mankind. He tears autonomously the unfinished female person creature afterward he sees the Creature, who had indeed followed Victor, watching through a window. The Creature immediately bursts through the door to confront Victor and tries to threaten him into working again, but Victor is convinced that since the Creature is evil, his mate would be evil besides, and that the pair would threaten all of humanity by giving rise to a new race just like them. The Creature leaves, but gives a final threat: "I will be with you lot on your wedding dark." Victor interprets this as a threat upon his life, assertive that the Creature volition kill him subsequently he finally becomes happy. Victor sails out to sea to dispose of his instruments, falls asleep in the boat, is unable to return to shore because of changes in the winds, and ends upwards existence blown to the Irish coast. When Victor lands in Ireland, he is arrested for Clerval's murder, every bit the Animate being had strangled Clerval and left the corpse to be establish where his creator had arrived. Victor suffers another mental breakdown and wakes to detect himself in prison. However, he is shown to be innocent, and after being released, he returns home with his father, who has restored to Elizabeth some of her father's fortune.

In Geneva, Victor is about to marry Elizabeth and prepares to fight the Creature to the death, arming himself with pistols and a dagger. The night post-obit their wedding, Victor asks Elizabeth to stay in her room while he looks for "the fiend". While Victor searches the house and grounds, the Creature strangles Elizabeth. From the window, Victor sees the Creature, who tauntingly points at Elizabeth'due south corpse; Victor tries to shoot him, but the Animal escapes. Victor'south father, weakened by age and by the death of Elizabeth, dies a few days later. Seeking revenge, Victor pursues the Creature through Europe, then north into Russia, with his adversary staying ahead of him every pace of the way. Somewhen, the hunt leads to the Arctic Ocean and and so on towards the North Pole, and Victor reaches a point where he is within a mile of the Fauna, simply he collapses from burnout and hypothermia before he can find his quarry, allowing the Creature to escape. Eventually the water ice around Victor's sledge breaks apart, and the resultant ice floe comes within range of Walton'due south ship.

Helm Walton'south decision [edit]

At the end of Victor's narrative, Captain Walton resumes telling the story. A few days after the Creature vanishes, the ship becomes trapped in pack ice, and several crewmen dice in the common cold before the remainder of Walton'due south crew insists on returning s once it is freed. Upon hearing the coiffure'southward demands, Victor is angered and, despite his status, gives a powerful voice communication to them. He reminds them of why they chose to join the trek and that it is hardship and danger, not comfort, that defines a glorious undertaking such as theirs. He urges them to be men, not cowards. However, although the speech makes an impression on the crew, it is not enough to change their minds and when the send is freed, Walton regretfully decides to return South. Victor, fifty-fifty though he is in a very weak status, states that he will keep by himself. He is adamant that the Creature must die.

Victor dies presently thereafter, telling Walton, in his last words, to seek "happiness in repose and avert appetite." Walton discovers the Creature on his ship, mourning over Victor'southward body. The Fauna tells Walton that Victor'south death has not brought him peace; rather, his crimes have fabricated him even more miserable than Victor ever was. The Fauna vows to kill himself so that no i else will e'er know of his existence and Walton watches as the Creature drifts away on an water ice raft, never to exist seen once more.

[edit]

Mary Shelley'south female parent, Mary Wollstonecraft, died from infection xi days afterward giving birth to her. Shelley grew close to her father, William Godwin, having never known her mother. Godwin hired a nurse, who briefly cared for her and her half sister, before marrying second wife Mary Jane Clairmont, who did non like the close bail between Shelley and her male parent. The resulting friction acquired Godwin to favour his other children.

Shelley'due south father was a famous author of the time, and her education was of great importance to him, although it was not formal. Shelley grew upwardly surrounded by her begetter's friends, writers, and persons of political importance, who often gathered at the family home. This inspired her authorship at an early historic period. Mary met Percy Bysshe Shelley, who later became her husband, at the age of sixteen while he was visiting her male parent. Godwin did not approve of the relationship betwixt his daughter and an older, married man, and then they fled to France along with her stepsister, Claire Clairmont. It was during their trip to France that Percy very likely had an thing with Mary's stepsister, Claire.^[12] On 22 Feb 1815, Shelley gave nativity prematurely to her first child, Clara who then died 2 weeks later. Over eight years, she endured a similar pattern of pregnancy and loss, one haemorrhage occurring until Percy placed her upon ice to cease the bleeding.^[xiii]

In the summertime of 1816, Mary, Percy, and Claire took a trip to visit Claire's lover, Lord Byron, in Geneva. During the visit, Byron suggested that he, Mary, Percy, and Byron'south doc, John Polidori, accept a contest to write the best ghost story to pass time stuck indoors.^[14] Historians suggest that an matter occurred likewise, even that the father of one of Shelley's children may take been Byron.^[13] Mary was just xviii years one-time when she won the contest with her cosmos of Frankenstein.^{[15] [sixteen]}

Literary influences [edit]

Shelley was heavily influenced by both of her parents' works. Her father was famous for Research Concerning Political Justice and her mother famous for A Vindication of the Rights of Adult female. Her male parent's novels also influenced her writing of Frankenstein. These novels included Things equally They Are; or, The Adventures of Caleb Williams, St. Leon, and Fleetwood. All of these books were set up in Switzerland, like to the setting in Frankenstein. Some major themes of social affections and the renewal of life that appear in Shelley's novel stem from these works she had in her possession. Other literary influences that appear in Frankenstein are Pygmalion et Galatée by Mme de Genlis, and Ovid, with the utilise of individuals identifying the problems with society.^[17] Ovid also inspires the employ of Prometheus in Shelley'south title.^[eighteen]

The influence of John Milton's Paradise Lost and Samuel Taylor Coleridge'south The Rime of the Ancient Mariner are clearly evident in the novel. In The Frankenstein of the French Revolution, author Julia Douthwaite posits that Shelley probable acquired some ideas for Frankenstein's character from Humphry Davy'south book Elements of Chemical Philosophy, in which he had written that "science has ... bestowed upon man powers which may be called creative; which have enabled him to change and modify the beings around him ...". References to the French Revolution run through the novel; a possible source may lie in François-Félix Nogaret [fr]'s Le Miroir des événemens actuels, ou la Belle au plus offrant (1790), a political parable nigh scientific progress featuring an inventor named Frankésteïn, who creates a life-sized automaton.^[xix]

Both Frankenstein and the monster quote passages from Percy Shelley's 1816 poem, "Mutability", and its theme of the role of the subconscious is discussed in prose. Percy Shelley's proper name never appeared every bit the writer of the verse form, although the novel credits other quoted poets by name. Samuel Taylor Coleridge'south poem "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" (1798) is associated with the theme of guilt and William Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey" (1798) with that of innocence.

Many writers and historians accept attempted to associate several then popular natural philosophers (now called concrete scientists) with Shelley's piece of work because of several notable similarities. 2 of the most noted natural philosophers among Shelley'due south contemporaries were Giovanni Aldini, who made many public attempts at homo downtime through bio-electric Galvanism in London,^[twenty] and Johann Konrad Dippel, who was supposed to have developed chemical means to extend the life span of humans. While Shelley was aware of both of these men and their activities, she makes no mention of or reference to them or their experiments in any of her published or released notes.

Ideas about life and death discussed by Percy and Byron were of slap-up interest to scientists of that fourth dimension. They discussed ideas from Erasmus Darwin and the experiments of Luigi Galvani besides as James Lind.^[21] Mary joined these conversations and the ideas of Darwin, Galvani and perhaps Lind were present in her novel.

Shelley's personal experiences also influenced the themes within Frankenstein. The themes of loss, guilt, and the consequences of defying nature nowadays in the novel all developed from Mary Shelley's own life. The loss of her mother, the relationship with her begetter, and the death of her kickoff child are thought to accept inspired the monster and his separation from parental guidance. In a 1965 issue of The Periodical of Religion and Health a psychologist proposed that the theme of guilt stemmed from her not feeling good plenty for Percy considering of the loss of their child.^[16]

Composition [edit]

Draft of Frankenstein ("Information technology was on a dreary nighttime of November that I beheld my man completed ...")

During the rainy summer of 1816, the "Year Without a Summer", the earth was locked in a long, cold volcanic wintertime caused by the eruption of Mount Tambora in 1815.^{[22] [23]} Mary Shelley, aged eighteen, and her lover (and hereafter hubby), Percy Bysshe Shelley, visited Lord Byron at the Villa Diodati by Lake Geneva in Switzerland. The weather was too cold and dreary that summer to savour the outdoor holiday activities they had planned, so the group retired indoors until dawn.

Sitting around a log fire at Byron's villa, the company amused themselves by reading German language ghost stories translated into French from the book Fantasmagoriana. ^[24] Byron proposed that they "each write a ghost story."^[25] Unable to retrieve of a story, Mary Shelley became anxious. She recalled beingness asked "Have y'all thought of a story?" each morning time, and every time beingness "forced to reply with a mortifying negative."^[26] During 1 evening in the heart of summer, the discussions turned to the nature of the principle of life. "Perchance a corpse would be re-animated," Mary noted, "galvanism had given token of such things".^[27] It was after midnight before they retired and, unable to sleep, she became possessed by her imagination as she beheld the "grim terrors" of her "waking dream".^{[half dozen]}

I saw the pale pupil of unhallowed arts kneeling abreast the affair he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a human being stretched out, and and then, on the working of some powerful engine, bear witness signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half vital motion. Frightful must it exist; for supremely frightful would be the result of any man attempt to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world.^[28]

In September 2011, astronomer Donald Olson, afterwards a visit to the Lake Geneva villa the previous yr and inspecting information about the motility of the moon and stars, concluded that her "waking dream" took place between 2 a.m. and 3 a.m. on 16 June 1816, several days after the initial idea by Lord Byron that they each write a ghost story.^[29]

Mary Shelley began writing what she assumed would be a short story, but with Percy Shelley'due south encouragement, she expanded the tale into a full-fledged novel.^[thirty] She later described that summer in Switzerland as the moment "when I first stepped out from childhood into life."^[31] Shelley wrote the start four chapters in the weeks following the suicide of her half-sister Fanny.^[32] This was i of many personal tragedies that impacted Shelley's work. Shelley's first child died in infancy, and when she began composing Frankenstein in 1816, she was likely nursing her 2nd kid, who was besides dead by the time of Frankenstein's publication.^[33] Shelley wrote much of the book while residing in a lodging firm in the eye of Bath in 1816.^[34]

Byron managed to write just a fragment based on the vampire legends he heard while travelling the Balkans, and from this John Polidori created The Vampyre (1819), the progenitor of the romantic vampire literary genre. Thus two seminal horror tales originated from the conclave.

The group talked about Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment ideas besides. Mary Shelley believed the Enlightenment idea that society could progress and abound if political leaders used their powers responsibly; however, she also believed the Romantic platonic that misused power could destroy society.^[35]

Shelley's manuscripts for the first three-volume edition in 1818 (written 1816–1817), too as the fair copy for her publisher, are now housed in the Bodleian Library in Oxford. The Bodleian caused the papers in 2004, and they belong now to the Abinger Collection.^{[36] [37]} In 2008, the Bodleian published a new edition of Frankenstein, edited by Charles Eastward. Robinson, that contains comparisons of Mary Shelley's original text with Percy Shelley's additions and interventions alongside.^[38]

Frankenstein and the Monster [edit]

The Fauna [edit]

Although the Creature was described in afterwards works as a blended of whole torso parts grafted together from cadavers and reanimated by the employ of electricity, this clarification is non consistent with Shelley's work; both the apply of electricity and the cobbled-together image of Frankenstein's monster were more than the effect of James Whale's popular 1931 motion picture accommodation of the story and other early motion-picture show works based on the creature. In Shelley'south original work, Victor Frankenstein discovers a previously unknown only elemental principle of life, and that insight allows him to develop a method to imbue vitality into inanimate matter, though the exact nature of the procedure is left largely cryptic. After a great deal of hesitation in exercising this power, Frankenstein spends two years painstakingly constructing the Creature's body (one anatomical feature at a time, from raw materials supplied by "the dissecting room and the slaughter-house"), which he and so brings to life using his unspecified process.

Part of Frankenstein'southward rejection of his creation is the fact that he does not give him a proper name. Instead, Frankenstein's creation is referred to by words such every bit "wretch", "monster", "brute", "demon", "devil", "fiend", and "it". When Frankenstein converses with the creature, he addresses him equally "vile insect", "abhorred monster", "fiend", "wretched devil", and "abhorred devil". John C. Engleworth, a Victorian literature professor at Cornell University,^[37] posits that the creature was inspired by a homo Shelly met in her time in Geneva with Lord Byron. The human being was a beggar and geometer by the name of Noah Burdick, who Shelley described in her travel diary equally "sickly, gaunt, abysmally tall and lacking any human emotion, morality, or sensibilities".^[36] Jackson Blackwell, a literary historian, corroborates this viewpoint.^[40]

In the novel, the beast is compared to Adam,^[40] the first man in the Garden of Eden. The monster likewise compares himself with the "fallen" angel. Speaking to Frankenstein, the monster says "I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel". That angel would exist Lucifer (meaning "calorie-free-bringer") in Milton's Paradise Lost, which the monster has read. Adam is also referred to in the epigraph of the 1818 edition:^[41]

Did I request thee, Maker, from my dirt

To mould Me man? Did I solicit thee

From darkness to promote me?^[42]

The Brute has oftentimes been mistakenly called Frankenstein. In 1908, ane author said "Information technology is strange to note how well-nigh universally the term "Frankenstein" is misused, even by intelligent people, as describing some hideous monster."^[43] Edith Wharton's The Reef (1916) describes an unruly child as an "infant Frankenstein."^[44] David Lindsay's "The Conjugal Ornament", published in The Rover, 12 June 1844, mentioned "the maker of poor Frankenstein". After the release of Whale'southward cinematic Frankenstein, the public at large began speaking of the Creature itself as "Frankenstein". This misnomer continued with the successful sequel Helpmate of Frankenstein (1935), as well equally in movie titles such as Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.

Origin of Victor Frankenstein's proper noun [edit]

Mary Shelley maintained that she derived the proper name Frankenstein from a dream-vision. This claim has since been disputed and debated by scholars that have suggested culling sources for Shelley's inspiration.^[46] The German name Frankenstein ways "stone of the Franks," and is associated with various places in Federal republic of germany, including Frankenstein Castle (Burg Frankenstein) in Darmstadt, Hesse, and Frankenstein Castle in Frankenstein, a town in the Palatinate. There is also a castle called Frankenstein in Bad Salzungen, Thuringia, and a municipality called Frankenstein in Saxony. Until 1945, Ząbkowice Śląskie, now a city in Lower Silesian Voivodeship, Poland, was mainly populated by Germans and was the site of a scandal involving gravediggers in 1606, which has been suggested equally an inspiration to the writer.^[47] Finally, the proper name is borne past the aristocratic House of Franckenstein from Franconia.

Radu Florescu argued that Mary and Percy Shelley visited Frankenstein Castle near Darmstadt in 1814, where alchemist Johann Konrad Dippel had experimented with human bodies, and reasoned that Mary suppressed mention of her visit in guild to maintain her public claim of originality.^[48] A literary essay by A. J. Day supports Florescu's position that Mary Shelley knew of and visited Frankenstein Castle before writing her debut novel.^[49] Mean solar day includes details of an alleged description of the Frankenstein castle in Mary Shelley's "lost journals." However, according to Jörg Heléne, Day's and Florescu's claims cannot be verified.^[50]

A possible interpretation of the name "Victor" is derived from Paradise Lost by John Milton, a bang-up influence on Shelley (a quotation from Paradise Lost is on the opening page of Frankenstein and Shelley writes that the monster reads it in the novel).^{[51] [52]} Milton frequently refers to God every bit "the victor" in Paradise Lost, and Victor'south creation of life in the novel is compared to God's cosmos of life in Paradise Lost. In add-on, Shelley'south portrayal of the monster owes much to the character of Satan in Paradise Lost; and, the monster says in the story, after reading the epic poem, that he empathizes with Satan's office.

Parallels between Victor Frankenstein and Mary'due south husband, Percy Shelley, have also been drawn. Percy Shelley was the first-born son of a wealthy country squire with strong political connections and a descendant of Sir Bysshe Shelley, 1st Baronet of Castle Goring, and Richard Fitzalan, tenth Earl of Arundel.^[53] Similarly, Victor's family is ane of the most distinguished of that republic and his ancestors were counsellors and syndics. Percy's sis and Victor's adopted sister were both named Elizabeth. There are many other similarities, from Percy's usage of "Victor" as a pen name for Original Poetry by Victor and Cazire, a collection of poetry he wrote with Elizabeth,^[54] to Percy'south days at Eton, where he had "experimented with electricity and magnetism likewise as with gunpowder and numerous chemical reactions," and the way in which Percy's rooms at Oxford were filled with scientific equipment.^{[55] [56]}

Modern Prometheus [edit]

The Modern Prometheus is the novel's subtitle (though modernistic editions now driblet it, only mentioning it in introduction).^[57] Prometheus, in versions of Greek mythology, was the Titan who created humans in the image of the gods so that they could take a spirit breathed into them at the behest of Zeus.^[58] Prometheus and then taught man to hunt, but after he tricked Zeus into accepting "poor-quality offerings" from humans, Zeus kept fire from flesh. Prometheus took back the fire from Zeus to give to man. When Zeus discovered this, he sentenced Prometheus to be eternally punished by fixing him to a rock of Caucasus, where each day an hawkeye pecked out his liver, only for the liver to regrow the side by side day because of his immortality as a god.

As a Pythagorean, or believer in An Essay on Forbearance from Animal Nutrient, equally a Moral Duty by Joseph Ritson,^[59] Mary Shelley saw Prometheus not as a hero just rather as something of a devil, and blamed him for bringing fire to human and thereby seducing the human race to the vice of eating meat.^[60] Percy wrote several essays on what became known as vegetarianism including A Vindication of Natural Nutrition.^[59]

Byron was particularly attached to the play Prometheus Spring by Aeschylus, and Percy Shelley before long wrote his own Prometheus Unbound (1820). The term "Modern Prometheus" was derived from Immanuel Kant who described Benjamin Franklin every bit the "Prometheus of modernistic times" in reference to his experiments with electricity.^[61]

Publication [edit]

Shelley completed her writing in Apr/May 1817, and Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus was published on one January 1818^[62] by the small London publishing firm Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor, & Jones.^{[63] [64]} It was issued anonymously, with a preface written for Mary by Percy Bysshe Shelley and with a dedication to philosopher William Godwin, her father. Information technology was published in an edition of just 500 copies in three volumes, the standard "triple-decker" format for 19th-century first editions.

A variety of different editions

A French translation (Frankenstein: ou le Prométhée Moderne, translated by Jules Saladin) appeared as early on as 1821. The 2d English edition of Frankenstein was published on 11 August 1823 in two volumes (by G. and West. B. Whittaker) following the success of the phase play Presumption; or, the Fate of Frankenstein by Richard Brinsley Peake.^[65] This edition credited Mary Shelley as the book's writer on its title page.

On 31 October 1831, the beginning "popular" edition in 1 book appeared, published by Henry Colburn & Richard Bentley.^[66] This edition was heavily revised past Mary Shelley, partially to brand the story less radical. It included a lengthy new preface by the author, presenting a somewhat embellished version of the genesis of the story. This edition is the 1 most widely published and read at present, although a few editions follow the 1818 text.^[67] Some scholars adopt the original version, arguing that it preserves the spirit of Mary Shelley's vision (see Anne K. Mellor's "Choosing a Text of Frankenstein to Teach" in the W. W. Norton Critical edition).

Reception [edit]

Frankenstein has been both well received and disregarded since its anonymous publication in 1818. Critical reviews of that fourth dimension demonstrate these 2 views, along with confused speculation as to the identity of the author. Walter Scott, writing in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, praises the novel as an "extraordinary tale, in which the author seems to u.s. to disclose uncommon powers of poetic imagination," although he was less convinced about the fashion in which the monster gains noesis most the globe and language.^[68] La Belle Assemblée described the novel as "very bold fiction"^[69] and the Edinburgh Mag and Literary Miscellany hoped to see "more than productions ... from this author".^[seventy] On the other hand, John Wilson Croker, writing anonymously in the Quarterly Review, although conceding that "the author has powers, both of conception and language," described the book as "a tissue of horrible and disgusting absurdity."^[71]

In ii other reviews where the author is known equally the daughter of William Godwin, the criticism of the novel makes reference to the feminine nature of Mary Shelley. The British Critic attacks the novel's flaws as the fault of the author: "The writer of it is, we understand, a female person; this is an bedevilment of that which is the prevailing fault of the novel; but if our authoress can forget the gentleness of her sex, it is no reason why we should; and we shall therefore dismiss the novel without further annotate".^[72] The Literary Panorama and National Register attacks the novel every bit a "feeble imitation of Mr. Godwin's novels" produced by the "daughter of a celebrated living novelist."^[73] Despite these reviews, Frankenstein achieved an almost immediate popular success. It became widely known, especially through melodramatic theatrical adaptations—Mary Shelley saw a production of Presumption; or The Fate of Frankenstein, a play by Richard Brinsley Peake, in 1823.

Disquisitional reception of Frankenstein has been largely positive since the mid-20th century.^[74] Major critics such every bit Thousand. A. Goldberg and Harold Bloom have praised the "artful and moral" relevance of the novel,^[75] although there have besides been critics, such as Germaine Greer, who criticized the novel for technical and narrative defects (who claimed it has three narrators who speak in the same way).^[76] In more than recent years the novel has get a popular subject for psychoanalytic and feminist criticism: Lawrence Lipking states: "[E]ven the Lacanian subgroup of psychoanalytic criticism, for example, has produced at to the lowest degree half a dozen discrete readings of the novel".^[77] Frankenstein has oft been recommended on Five Books, with literary scholars, psychologists, novelists, and historians citing information technology equally an influential text.^[78] Today, the novel is generally considered to be a landmark piece of work of Romantic and Gothic literature, as well as scientific discipline fiction.^[79]

Film director Guillermo del Toro describes Frankenstein as "the quintessential teenage book", noting that the feelings that "You don't belong. You were brought to this world by people that don't intendance for yous and you are thrown into a world of pain and suffering, and tears and hunger" are an important role of the story. He adds that "information technology's an amazing book written by a teenage girl. It's mind-bravado."^[80] Professor of philosophy Patricia MacCormack says that the Creature addresses the most fundamental homo questions: "It's the thought of asking your maker what your purpose is. Why are nosotros here, what tin can we do?"^[80] On November v, 2019, the BBC News listed Frankenstein on its listing of the 100 most influential novels.^[81]

Films, plays, and goggle box [edit]

This section needs expansion. You can help past adding to information technology. (July 2021)

See too [edit]

• Frankenstein authorship question
• Frankenstein statement
• Frankenstein complex
• Frankenstein in Baghdad
• Frankenstein in popular civilization
• John Murray Spear
• Golem
• Homunculus
• List of dreams

References [edit]

1. ^ Stableford, Brian (1995). "Frankenstein and the Origins of Science Fiction". In Seed, David (ed.). Anticipations: Essays on Early Science Fiction and its Precursors. Syracuse University Press. pp. 47–49. ISBN978-0815626404 . Retrieved 19 July 2018.
2. ^ Hobbler, Dorthy and Thomas. The Monsters: Mary Shelley and the Curse of Frankenstein. Back Bay Books; 20 August 2007.
3. ^ Garrett, Martin. Mary Shelley. Oxford Academy Printing, 2002
4. ^ Seymour, Miranda. Mary Shelley. Atlanta, GA: Grove Press, 2002. pp. 110–11
5. ^ McGasko, Joe. "Her 'Midnight Pillow': Mary Shelley and the Cosmos of Frankenstein". Biography. Archived from the original on 19 Feb 2019. Retrieved 18 Feb 2019.
6. ^ ^{a b} Shelley, Mary. Paragraphs 11–13, "Introduction" Frankenstein (1831 edition) Archived 2014-01-06 at the Wayback Car Gutenberg
7. ^ The Detached Retina: Aspects of SF and Fantasy by Brian Aldiss (1995), p. 78.
8. ^ Bergen Evans, Comfortable Words, New York: Random House, 1957
9. ^ Bryan Garner, A Lexicon of Modern American Usage, New York, Oxford: Oxford Academy Printing, 1998.
10. ^ Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of American English, Merriam-Webster: 2002.
11. ^ Anderson, John (25 January 2022). "'Boris Karloff: The Man Behind the Monster' Review: A Very Dissimilar Creature". Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. Retrieved 26 January 2022.
12. ^ "Journal 6 December—Very Unwell. Shelley & Clary walk out, equally usual, to heaps of places ... A letter from Hookham to say that Harriet has been brought to bed of a son and heir. Shelley writes a number of circular letters on this event, which ought to be ushered in with ringing of bells, etc., for information technology is the son of his married woman." Quoted in Spark, 39.
13. ^ ^{a b} Lepore, Jill (5 February 2018). "The Strange and Twisted Life of "Frankenstein"". The New Yorker. ISSN 0028-792X. Archived from the original on 22 Feb 2018. Retrieved 4 March 2019.
14. ^ History.com editors. "Mary Shelley'south "Frankenstein" is published". History.com . Retrieved 11 February 2021.
15. ^ "Frankenstein: Penetrating the Secrets of Nature: The Birth of Frankenstein". world wide web.nlm.nih.gov. Archived from the original on 29 November 2018. Retrieved 20 Nov 2018.
16. ^ ^{a b} Badalamenti, Anthony (Autumn 2006). "Why did Mary Shelley Write Frankenstein". Journal of Religion and Health. 45 (3): 419–39. doi:10.1007/s10943-006-9030-0. JSTOR 27512949. S2CID 37615140.
17. ^ "Pollin, "Philosophical and Literary Sources"". knarf.english.upenn.edu. Archived from the original on five April 2019. Retrieved 26 May 2019.
18. ^ Pollin, Burton (Leap 1965). "Philosophical and Literary Sources of Frankenstein". Comparative Literature. 17 (2): 97–108. doi:10.2307/1769997. JSTOR 1769997.
19. ^ Douthwaite, "The Frankenstein of the French Revolution" chapter ii of The Frankenstein of 1790 and other Lost Chapters from Revolutionary France (Frankenstein of 1790 and other Lost Chapters from Revolutionary French republic Archived 16 November 2012 at the Wayback Car, 2012).
20. ^ Ruston, Sharon (25 November 2015). "The Science of Life and Expiry in Mary Shelley'southward Frankenstein". The Public Domain Review. Archived from the original on 26 November 2015. Retrieved 25 Nov 2015.
21. ^ "Lind, James (1736-1812) on JSTOR". plants.jstor.org . Retrieved 8 May 2021. {{cite spider web}}: CS1 maint: url-condition (link)
22. ^ Marshall, Alan (January 2020). "Did a Volcanic Eruption in Indonesia Actually Atomic number 82 to the Creation of Frankenstein?". The Chat.
23. ^ Sunstein, 118.
24. ^ Dr. John Polidori, "The Vampyre" 1819, The New Monthly Magazine and Universal Register; London: H. Colburn, 1814–1820. Vol. one, No. 63.
25. ^ paragraph 7, Introduction, Frankenstein 1831 edition
26. ^ paragraph viii, Introduction, Frankenstein 1831 edition
27. ^ paragraph 10, Introduction, Frankenstein 1831 edition
28. ^ Quoted in Spark, 157, from Mary Shelley's introduction to the 1831 edition of Frankenstein.
29. ^ Radford, Tim, Frankenstein's 60 minutes of creation identified by astronomers Archived 2 March 2017 at the Wayback Auto, The Guardian, Lord's day 25 September 2011 (retrieved five January 2014)
30. ^ Bennett, An Introduction, 30–31; Sunstein, 124.
31. ^ Sunstein, 117.
32. ^ Hay, 103.
33. ^ Lepore, Jill (5 February 2018). "The Strange and Twisted Life of 'Frankenstein'". The New Yorker. Archived from the original on 22 Feb 2018. Retrieved 22 February 2018.
34. ^ Kennedy, Mave (26 February 2018). "'A 200-year-old surreptitious': plaque to marking Bath's hidden function in Frankenstein". theguardian.com. Archived from the original on 14 November 2018. Retrieved 13 Nov 2018.
35. ^ Bennett, Betty T. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley: An Introduction, pp. 36–42. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Printing, 1998.
36. ^ ^{a b} "OX.ac.uk". Bodley.ox.air-conditioning.united kingdom. 15 Dec 2009. Archived from the original on 5 Dec 2017. Retrieved 28 August 2010.
37. ^ ^{a b} "Shelley's Ghost – Reshaping the paradigm of a literary family". shelleysghost.bodleian.ox.air-conditioning.uk. Archived from the original on 10 Baronial 2019. Retrieved xix September 2019.
38. ^ Mary Shelley, with Percy Shelley (2008). Charles E. Robinson (ed.). The Original Frankenstein. Oxford: Bodleian Library. ISBN978-ane-851-24396-9. Archived from the original on 25 September 2015.
39. ^ Frankenstein:Celluloid Monster Archived 15 May 2016 at the Wayback Motorcar at the National Library of Medicine website of the (U.S.) National Institutes of Health
40. ^ ^{a b} "Frankenstein: Penetrating the Secrets of Nature / Showroom Text" (PDF). National Library of Medicine and ALA Public Programs Office. Archived from the original (PDF) on 4 December 2006. Retrieved 31 Dec 2007. from the travelling exhibition Frankenstein: Penetrating the Secrets of Nature Archived 9 Nov 2007 at the Wayback Machine
41. ^ Shelley, Mary (1818). Frankenstein (i ed.).
42. ^ John Milton, Paradise Lost (10. 743–45)
43. ^ Author's Digest: The World's Swell Stories in Brief, by Rossiter Johnson, 1908
44. ^ The Reef, p. 96.
45. ^ This illustration is reprinted in the frontispiece to the 2008 edition of Frankenstein Archived seven November 2015 at the Wayback Automobile
46. ^ Gray, Paul (23 July 1979). "Books: The Human-Fabricated Monster". Time. ISSN 0040-781X. Retrieved 21 September 2020.
47. ^ zapomniana, Historia (24 January 2016). "Afera grabarzy z Frankenstein". Archived from the original on 3 February 2018. Retrieved 15 February 2017.
48. ^ Florescu 1996, pp. 48–92.
49. ^ Day, A.J. (2005). Fantasmagoriana (Tales of the Dead). Fantasmagoriana Printing. pp. 149–51. ISBN978-1-4116-5291-0.
50. ^ Heléne, Jörg (12 September 2016). "Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Castle Frankenstein and the alchemist Johann Conrad Dippel". Darmstadt. Archived from the original on 7 October 2016. Retrieved 23 June 2017.
51. ^ "Wade, Phillip. "Shelley and the Miltonic Element in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein." Milton and the Romantics, 2 (December, 1976), 23–25". Archived from the original on 14 April 2011. Retrieved v August 2011.
52. ^ Jones 1952, pp. 496–97.
53. ^ Percy Shelley#Ancestry
54. ^ Sandy, Marking (20 September 2002). "Original Poetry by Victor and Cazire". The Literary Encyclopedia. The Literary Dictionary Company. Archived from the original on viii November 2006. Retrieved 2 Jan 2007.
55. ^ "Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)". Romantic Natural History. Department of English, Dickinson College. Archived from the original on 16 August 2006. Retrieved 2 January 2007.
56. ^ Goulding, Christopher (2002). "The existent Medico Frankenstein?". Periodical of the Royal Society of Medicine. 95 (5): 257–259. doi:10.1258/jrsm.95.five.257. ISSN 0141-0768. PMC1279684. PMID 11983772.
57. ^ For example, the Longman study edition published in Bharat in 2007 by Pearson Education
58. ^ In the all-time-known versions of the Prometheus story, by Hesiod and Aeschylus, Prometheus only brings fire to flesh, but in other versions, such as several of Aesop's fables (See in particular Fable 516), Sappho (Fragment 207), and Ovid's Metamorphoses, Prometheus is the actual creator of humanity.
59. ^ ^{a b} Morton, Timothy (21 September 2006). The Cambridge Companion to Shelley. Cambridge University Printing. ISBN9781139827072.
60. ^ (Leonard Wolf, p. 20).
61. ^ RoyalSoc.ac.uk Archived 12 May 2013 at the Wayback Machine "Benjamin Franklin in London." The Royal Society. Retrieved 8 August 2007.
62. ^ Robinson, Charles (1996). The Frankenstein Notebooks: A Facsimile Edition. Vol. 1. Garland Publishing, Inc. p. xxv. Archived from the original on xvi March 2017. Retrieved 15 March 2017. She began that novel equally Mary Godwin in June 1816 when she was eighteen years old, she finished it equally Mary Shelley in April/May 1817 when she was nineteen . . . and she published information technology anonymously on ane January 1818 when she was twenty.
63. ^ Bennett, Betty T. Mary Wollstonecraft. Shelley: An Introduction. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998
64. ^ D. L. Macdonald and Kathleen Scherf, "A Annotation on the Text", Frankenstein, 2nd ed., Peterborough: Broadview Press, 1999.
65. ^ Wollstonecraft Shelley, Mary (2000). Frankenstein. Bedford Publishing. p. 3. ISBN978-0312227623.
66. ^ See forward to Barnes and Noble archetype edition.
67. ^ The edition published by Forgotten Books is the original text, as is the "Ignatius Critical Edition". Vintage Books has an edition presenting both versions.
68. ^ Scott, Walter (March 1818). "Remarks on Frankenstein, or the Modernistic Prometheus; A Novel". Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine: 613–620. Archived from the original on 14 Jan 2020. Retrieved xiv Jan 2020.
69. ^ "Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. 3 vols. 12mo. Lackington and Co". La Belle Assemblée. New Series. 1 February 1818. pp. 139–142. Archived from the original on 14 January 2020. Retrieved xiv Jan 2020.
70. ^ "Review – Frankenstein". The Edinburgh Magazine and Literary Miscellany. New Serial. March 1818. pp. 249–253.
71. ^ "Review of Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus". The Quarterly Review. 18: 379–85. January 1818. Archived from the original on 6 November 2018. Retrieved xviii March 2017.
72. ^ "Art. XII. Frankenstein: or the Modern Prometheus. 3 vols. 12mo. 16s. 6d. Lackington and Co. 1818". The British Critic. New Series. 9: 432–438. April 1818. Archived from the original on xiv January 2020. Retrieved 14 January 2020.
73. ^ "Frankenstein; or, the modernistic Prometheus. three vols. Lackington and Co. 1818". The Literary Panorama and National Register. New Series. eight: 411–414. June 1818. Archived from the original on 14 January 2020. Retrieved fourteen January 2020.
74. ^ "Enotes.com". Enotes.com. Archived from the original on 24 September 2010. Retrieved 28 Baronial 2010.
75. ^ "KCTCS.edu". Octc.kctcs.edu. Archived from the original on 15 November 2004. Retrieved 28 August 2010.
76. ^ Germaine Greer (nine April 2007). "Yeah, Frankenstein really was written by Mary Shelley. Information technology'due south obvious – because the book is and so bad". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 6 October 2016. Retrieved 4 October 2016.
77. ^ L. Lipking. Frankenstein the True Story; or Rousseau Judges Jean-Jacques. (Published in the Norton critical edition. 1996)
78. ^ Five Books. "Frankenstein by Mary Shelley | Five Books Practiced Reviews". Five Books. Archived from the original on 24 March 2019. Retrieved thirteen September 2019.
79. ^ UTM.edu Archived iii December 2010 at the Wayback Machine Lynn Alexander, Department of English, University of Tennessee at Martin. Retrieved 27 August 2009.
80. ^ ^{a b} "Frankenstein: Behind the monster smash". BBC. i January 2018. Archived from the original on 27 July 2018. Retrieved 21 July 2018.
81. ^ "100 'most inspiring' novels revealed by BBC Arts". BBC News. 5 Nov 2019. Archived from the original on 8 November 2019. Retrieved x November 2019. The reveal kickstarts the BBC's yr-long celebration of literature.

Sources [edit]

• Aldiss, Brian Due west. "On the Origin of Species: Mary Shelley". Speculations on Speculation: Theories of Science Fiction. Eds. James Gunn and Matthew Candelaria. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow, 2005.
• Baldick, Chris. In Frankenstein's Shadow: Myth, Monstrosity, and Nineteenth-Century Writing. Oxford: Oxford Academy Press, 1987.
• Bann, Stephen, ed. "Frankenstein": Creation and Monstrosity. London: Reaktion, 1994.
• Behrendt, Stephen C., ed. Approaches to Education Shelley'south "Frankenstein". New York: MLA, 1990.
• Bennett, Betty T. and Stuart Curran, eds. Mary Shelley in Her Times. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Printing, 2000.
• Bennett, Betty T. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley: An Introduction. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998. ISBN 0-8018-5976-10.
• Bohls, Elizabeth A. "Standards of Taste, Discourses of 'Race', and the Aesthetic Education of a Monster: Critique of Empire in Frankenstein". Eighteenth-Century Life 18.3 (1994): 23–36.
• Botting, Fred. Making Monstrous: "Frankenstein", Criticism, Theory. New York: St. Martin's, 1991.
• Chapman, D. That Non Impossible She: A study of gender structure and Individualism in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, UK: Concept, 2011. ISBN 978-1480047617
• Clery, East. J. Women's Gothic: From Clara Reeve to Mary Shelley. Plymouth: Northcote House, 2000.
• Conger, Syndy Grand., Frederick S. Frank, and Gregory O'Dea, eds. Iconoclastic Departures: Mary Shelley afterwards "Frankenstein": Essays in Honour of the Bicentenary of Mary Shelley's Birth. Madison, New Jersey: Fairleigh Dickinson University Printing, 1997.
• Donawerth, Jane. Frankenstein's Daughters: Women Writing Science Fiction. Syracuse: Syracuse Academy Press, 1997.
• Douthwaite, Julia Five. "The Frankenstein of the French Revolution," chapter 2 of The Frankenstein of 1790 and other Lost Chapters from Revolutionary France Archived 16 November 2012 at the Wayback Car. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012.
• Dunn, Richard J. "Narrative Distance in Frankenstein". Studies in the Novel vi (1974): 408–17.
• Eberle-Sinatra, Michael, ed. Mary Shelley'due south Fictions: From "Frankenstein" to "Falkner". New York: St. Martin'southward Press, 2000.
• Ellis, Kate Ferguson. The Contested Castle: Gothic Novels and the Subversion of Domestic Credo. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989.
• Florescu, Radu (1996). In Search of Frankenstein: Exploring the Myths Behind Mary Shelley's Monster (2nd ed.). London: Robson Books. ISBN978-1-861-05033-v.
• Forry, Steven Earl. Hideous Progenies: Dramatizations of "Frankenstein" from Mary Shelley to the Present. Philadelphia: Academy of Pennsylvania Printing, 1990.
• Freedman, Carl. "Hail Mary: On the Author of Frankenstein and the Origins of Science Fiction". Science Fiction Studies 29.ii (2002): 253–64.
• Gigante, Denise. "Facing the Ugly: The Case of Frankenstein". ELH 67.2 (2000): 565–87.
• Gilbert, Sandra and Susan Gubar. The Madwoman in the Attic: The Adult female Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination. New Haven: Yale Academy Printing, 1979.
• Hay, Daisy "Young Romantics" (2010): 103.
• Heffernan, James A. W. "Looking at the Monster: Frankenstein and Film". Disquisitional Research 24.1 (1997): 133–58.
• Hodges, Devon. "Frankenstein and the Feminine Subversion of the Novel". Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature 2.2 (1983): 155–64.
• Hoeveler, Diane Long. Gothic Feminism: The Professionalization of Gender from Charlotte Smith to the Brontës. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998.
• Holmes, Richard. Shelley: The Pursuit. 1974. London: Harper Perennial, 2003. ISBN 0-00-720458-2.
• Jones, Frederick L. (1952). "Shelley and Milton". Studies in Philology. 49 (3): 488–519. JSTOR 4173024.
• Knoepflmacher, U. C. and George Levine, eds. The Endurance of "Frankenstein": Essays on Mary Shelley'due south Novel. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979.
• Lew, Joseph W. "The Deceptive Other: Mary Shelley'southward Critique of Orientalism in Frankenstein". Studies in Romanticism 30.2 (1991): 255–83.
• London, Bette. "Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, and the Spectacle of Masculinity". PMLA 108.ii (1993): 256–67.
• Mellor, Anne K. Mary Shelley: Her Life, Her Fiction, Her Monsters. New York: Methuen, 1988.
• Michaud, Nicolas, Frankenstein and Philosophy: The Shocking Truth, Chicago: Open up Court, 2013.
• Miles, Robert. Gothic Writing 1750–1820: A Genealogy. London: Routledge, 1993.
• Milner, Andrew. Literature, Culture and Society. London: Routledge, 2005, ch.5.
• O'Flinn, Paul. "Production and Reproduction: The Example of Frankenstein". Literature and History 9.2 (1983): 194–213.
• Poovey, Mary. The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer: Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley, and Jane Austen. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984.
• Rauch, Alan. "The Monstrous Body of Knowledge in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein". Studies in Romanticism 34.ii (1995): 227–53.
• Selbanev, Xtopher. "Natural Philosophy of the Soul", Western Press, 1999.
• Schor, Esther, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Mary Shelley. Cambridge: Cambridge University Printing, 2003.
• Scott, Grant F. (April–June 2012). "Victor's Hush-hush: Queer Gothic in Lynd Ward's Illustrations to Frankenstein (1934)". Word & Image. 28 (two): 206–32. doi:10.1080/02666286.2012.687545. S2CID 154238300.
• Smith, Johanna Yard., ed. Frankenstein. Instance Studies in Contemporary Criticism. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 1992.
• Spark, Muriel. Mary Shelley. London: Cardinal, 1987. ISBN 0-7474-0318-X.
• Stableford, Brian. "Frankenstein and the Origins of Science Fiction". Anticipations: Essays on Early on Science Fiction and Its Precursors. Ed. David Seed. Syracuse: Syracuse University Printing, 1995.
• Sunstein, Emily W. Mary Shelley: Romance and Reality. 1989. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991. ISBN 0-8018-4218-2.
• Tropp, Martin. Mary Shelley'due south Monster. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1976.
• Veeder, William. Mary Shelley & Frankenstein: The Fate of Androgyny. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986.
• Williams, Anne. The Art of Darkness: A Poetics of Gothic. Chicago: University of Chicago Printing, 1995.

Further reading [edit]

• Richard Holmes, "Out of Control" (review of Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, Or, The Modern Prometheus: Annotated for Scientists, Engineers, and Creators of All Kinds, edited by David H. Guston, Ed Finn, and Jason Scott Robert, MIT Press, 277 pp.; and Mary Shelley, The New Annotated Frankenstein, edited and with a foreword and notes past Leslie Due south. Klinger, Liveright, 352 pp.), The New York Review of Books, vol. LXIV, no. 20 (21 Dec 2017), pp. 38, xl–41.

Editions [edit]

1818 text [edit]

• Shelley, Mary Frankenstein: 1818 text (Oxford University Press, 2009). Edited with an introduction and notes by Marilyn Butler.

1831 text [edit]

• Fairclough, Peter (ed.) Three Gothic Novels: Walpole / Castle of Otranto, Beckford / Vathek, Mary Shelley / Frankenstein (Penguin English Library, 1968). With an introductory essay by Mario Praz.
• Shelley, Mary Frankenstein (Oxford Academy Press, 2008). Edited with an introduction and notes by M. Yard. Joseph.

Differences between 1818 and 1831 text [edit]

Shelley fabricated several alterations in the 1831 edition including:

• The epigraph from Milton'southward Paradise Lost establish in the 1818 original has been removed.
• Chapter one is expanded and separate into 2 chapters.
• Elizabeth's origin is inverse from Victor's cousin to being an orphan.
• Victor is portrayed more than sympathetically in the original text. In the 1831 edition nonetheless, Shelley is critical of his decisions and actions.
• Shelley removed many references to scientific ideas which were popular around the time she wrote the 1818 edition of the book.
• Characters in the 1831 version have some dialogue removed entirely while others receive new dialogue.

External links [edit]

• Frankenstein at Standard Ebooks
• Frankenstein 1831 edition at Project Gutenberg
• Frankenstein 1818 edition at Project Gutenberg
• Frankenstein public domain audiobook at LibriVox
• Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Chronology and Resource Site
• "On Frankenstein", review by Percy Bysshe Shelley
• Volume one and Volume ii of Shelley's notebooks with her handwritten draft of Frankenstein

risingerbegry1998.blogspot.com

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankenstein

Share this post