Frankenstein

Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, is a novel written by English author Mary Shelley about the young student of science Victor Frankenstein, who creates a grotesque but sentient creature in an unorthodox scientific experiment. Shelley started writing the story when she was eighteen, and the novel was published when she was twenty. The first edition was published anonymously in London in 1818. Shelley's name appears on the second edition, published in France in 1823.Shelley had travelled through Europe in 1814, journeying along the river Rhine in Germany with a stop in Gernsheim which is just 17 km (10 mi) away from Frankenstein Castle, where two centuries before an alchemist was engaged in experiments. Later, she travelled in the region of Geneva (Switzerland)—where much of the story takes place—and the topics of galvanism and other similar occult ideas were themes of conversation among her companions, particularly her lover and future husband, Percy Shelley. Mary, Percy, Lord Byron, and John Polidori decided to have a competition to see who could write the best horror story. After thinking for days, Shelley dreamt about a scientist who created life and was horrified by what he had made; her dream later evolved into the story within the novel.

About the Author

Mary Shelley (1797-1851), the only daughter of writers William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, and wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley, is the critically acclaimed author of Frankenstein, Valperga, and The Last Man, in addition to many other works. Mary Shelley s writings reflect and were influenced by a number of literary traditions including Gothic and Romantic ideals, and Frankenstein is widely regarded as the first modern work of science fiction. Today s scholarship of Mary Shelley s writings reveal her to be a political radical, as demonstrated though recurring themes of cooperation and sympathy, particularly among women, in her work, which are in direct conflict with the individual Romantic ideals of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

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