Mary Shelley - Frankenstein: The 1818 Text

PENGUIN CLASSICS

FRANKENSTEIN

THE 1818 TEXT

MARY SHEL LEY was born in London in 1797, daughter of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, famous radical writers of the day. Marys mother died tragically ten days after the birth. Under Godwins conscientious and expert tuition, Marys was an intellectually stimulating childhood, though she often felt misunderstood by her stepmother and neglected by her father. In 1814 she met and soon fell in love with the then unknown Percy Bysshe Shelley, and in July they eloped to the Continent. In December 1816, after Shelleys first wife, Harriet, committed suicide, Mary and Percy married. Of the four children she bore Shelley, only Percy Florence survived. They lived in Italy from 1818 until 1822, when Shelley drowned following the sinking of his boat Ariel in a storm. Mary returned with Percy Florence to London, where she continued to live as a professional writer until her death in 1851.

The idea for Frankenstein came to Mary Godwin during a summer sojourn in 1816 with Percy Shelley on the shores of Lake Geneva, where Lord Byron was also staying. She was inspired to begin her unique tale after Byron suggested a ghost story competition. Byron himself produced A Fragment, which later inspired his physician John Polidori to write The Vampyre. Mary completed her short story back in England, and it was published as Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus in 1818. Among her other novels are The Last Man (1926), a dystopian story set in the twenty-first century, The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck (1830), Lodore (1835), and Falkner (1837). As well as contributing many stories and essays to publications such as the Keepsake and the Westminster Review, she wrote numerous biographical essays for Lardners Cabinet Cyclopaedia (1835, 183839). Her other books include the first collected edition of Percy Bysshe Shelleys Poetical Works (4 vols., 1839) and a book based on the Continental travels she undertook with her son Percy Florence and his friends, Rambles in Germany and Italy (1844). Mary Shelley died in London on February 1, 1851.

CHARLOTTE GORDON is an award-winning author whose work has appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Slate, and Washington Post, among other publications. Her latest book, Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley (2015), won the National Book Critics Circle Award. She has also published Mistress Bradstreet:The Untold Life of Americas First Poet (2005) and The Woman Who Named God: Abrahams Dilemma and the Birth of Three Faiths (2009). She is a Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Endicott College.

CHARLE S E. ROBINSON was a professor of English at the University of Delaware, frequently lectured on The Ten Texts of Frankenstein, and edited Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus: The Original Two-Volume Novel of 18161817from the Bodleian Library Manuscripts, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley(with Percy Bysshe Shelley) (2008), reprinted in paperback by Vintage Books (2009). His other books included Shelley and Byron: The Snake and Eagle Wreathed in Fight (1976); an edition of Mary Shelley: Collected Tales and Short Stories, with Original Engravings (1976); The Mary Shelley Reader (1990), coedited with Betty T. Bennett; an edition of Mary Shelleys Mythological Dramas: Proserpine and Midas (1992); and the two-volume Frankenstein Notebooks (1996).

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First published in Great Britain 1818

This edition with an introduction by Charlotte Gordon published in Penguin Books 2018

Introduction copyright 2018 by Charlotte Gordon

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Chronology, How to Read Frankenstein, and Suggested Further Reading by Charles E. Robinson first appeared in slightly different form in Frankenstein, Penguin Enriched eBook Classic. Copyright 2008 by Charles E. Robinson.

Ebook ISBN: 9781524705701

Cover illustration: Marci Washington

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