Mary Shelley - The New Annotated Frankenstein

OTHER ANNOTATED BOOKS FROM W. W. NORTON & COMPANY

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ALSO BY LESLIE S. KLINGER

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Frontispiece: From Volume I of the 1831 edition of Frankenstein .

Copyright 2017 by Leslie S. Klinger

Introduction copyright 2017 by Guillermo del Toro

Afterword copyright 2017 by Anne K. Mellor

All rights reserved

First Edition

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J ACKET DESIGN BY NINA LOSCHIAVO

J ACKET IMAGES: (BELA LUGOSI AS FRANKENSTEIN) PHOTO VIA JOHN KOBAL FOUNDATION/GETTY IMAGES; (UPPER LEFT) THE NIGHTMARE , OIL ON CANVAS, BY HENRY FUSELI; (UPPER RIGHT) MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT SHELLEY BY RICHARD ROTHWELL (1840); (LOWER LEFT) FRONTISPIECE OF 1831 EDITION OF FRANKENSTEIN ; (LOWER RIGHT) THE EDISON KINETOGRAM, SCENE FROM FRANKENSTEIN , EDISON STUDIOS (1910)

ISBN 978-0-87140-949-2

ISBN 978-0-87140-950-8 (e-book)

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Behold: I live and will continue to live

MARY SHELLEY , Valperga

CONTENTS

Mary Shelley, or the Modern Galatea

BY GUILLERMO DEL TORO

A LL ART IS self-portraiture.

All storytelling is autobiography.

The true North of life is death.

These are some of the truths evidenced by the work of a teenager, writing a piece of fantastic fiction two hundred years ago. A beautiful tale of loss and pain that, by being fantastic, allowed her to reveal her true self.

I have, perhaps, little to add to the scholarly and thorough annotations to be found in this splendid volume Mr. Klinger has assembled. In the volume you have in your hands you will find in equal measure erudition and passion. This may very well be the best presentation of Mary Shelleys book, or at least a touchstone to be consulted time and again.

Knowing this, the only thing I can offer is myself. I can give back some personal observationslove, and a little bit of autobiographyin talking about a book, a character, and a writer who entirely transformed my life.

The monumental achievement of Mary Shelley grows considerably in our eyes the more we know about the context in which the book was created.

Like all great movements, Romanticism was birthed out of rage and need: the need to assert upon the world a new way of looking at things, a way to fight the overbearing certainty of science, to understand the unholy uniformity of mechanization and the need to rescue the numinous, the emotional, above all things. To quote Lord Byron: The great object of life is sensationto feel that we existeven though in pain.

The irony of it all is that Romanticism was considered iconoclastic and rebellious and that, being a movement firmly gazing at the past, it became thoroughly modern.

It was punk rock to the establishment, to academia and the puritan mores of the time because it sought its roots in the provoking intersection of love and death in the poetic balance between loss and passion, damnation and desire.

Romanticism was an exuberant, young movement and it pursued the crossroads of all dichotomies as a source of true art. In ghosts, monsters, and mysteryall essential elements of our pastit found a way to fight against the stodgy narratives and values that dominated socially sanctioned art. It severed any ties with reason and with a rebellious scream gave birth to a world of gods and monsters.