Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley - The Original Frankenstein

Charles Robinson, more finely tuned to the authorship of than any scholar living or dead, has produced two versions of Mary Shelleys prepublication manuscript: as she first wrote it, then as it was marked with Percys additions and alterations. With as much certainty and in as much detail as superhumanly possible, Robinson reanimates the beginnings of this vibrant novel in an authoritative, smartly accomplished, reader-friendly edition that will delight its fans no less than it will stimulate its students. An original work of imagination itself, by illuminating the genesis of this novel, is now an invaluable part of its intriguing editorial history.

Susan J. Wolfson, Professor of English, Princeton University;
President, Association of Literary Scholars and Critics

Mary Shelleys was famously inspired by telling ghost stories with Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron during a cold, wet summer in the Swiss Alps. It continues to serve as shorthand for the dangers of reckless scientific advance, yet literary historians have never been able to agree on its origins. Could Mary Shelley, an unpublished 18-year-old, really have written the novel? Or was Frankensteins monster her future husbands creation?Charles E. Robinson presents a convincing case for crediting the novel to Mary (with Percy) Shelley, revealing the major changes PBS made to Marys first draft. The novel the Shelleys wrote together represents a remarkable act of literary homage and collaboration and Charles E. Robinsons revealing new edition allows modern readers to be there at its creation.

The Independent (London)

The novels textual instability is explored in the impressive introduction to Charles Robinsons new edition. His honourable aim is not to give us another text of the novel we knowor think we knowbut to strip away nearly two centuries of revision and appropriation in order to return to what he describes as the original .The value of Charles Robinsons edition lies in the confirmation of Mary Shelleys assertion that Every thing must have a beginningand that beginnings matterand in its affirmation of community, cooperation and collaboration as fundamental to literary production.

The Times Literary Supplement (London)

Thanks to the dogged textual work of Charles E. Robinson readers will now be able to see for themselves what Mary wrote before she turned it over to Percys editorial ministrations. [This] version of the novel probably comes as close as its possible to get to the draft that Mary first handed Percy to read.

The Chronicle of Higher Education

Charles E. Robinson is a professor of English at the University of Delaware. He has published and lectured extensively on the English Romantic writers, especially Byron and the Shelleys. His books include Shelley and Byron: The Snake and Eagle Wreathed in Fight; Mary Shelley: Collected Tales and Stories; Mary Shelleys Proserpine and Midas; and The Frankenstein Notebooks.

Mary Shelley was born in 1797, the daughter of political philosopher William Godwin and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft. At sixteen Mary began a romance with poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (17921822), marrying him in 1816 after the suicide of Percy Shelleys first wife, Harriet. Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus, Mary Shelleys most famous work, was first published in 1818. In 1822, Percy drowned in a sailing accident off the coast of Italy. Mary published a number of other novels in addition to short stories, biographies, and travel writings and also devoted herself to editing and promoting the works of her husband. She died at the age of fifty-three in 1851.

FIRST VINTAGE CLASSICS EDITION, SEPTEMBER 2009

Introduction 2008 by Charles E. Robinson
Text and images 2008 by Bodleian Library, University of Oxford

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in the United Kingdom by the Bodleian Library, Broad Street, Oxford OX1 3BG, in 2008.

Vintage is a registered trademark and Vintage Classics and
colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Following a period of loan-deposit, the Frankenstein manuscripts were purchased by the Bodleian Library in 2004 as part of the Abinger collection, with the generous support of the National Heritage Memorial Fund and of other institutional and private donors.

Illustration; shelf marks: frontispiece, [Abinger] Dep. c. 477/1, fol. 21r; , Arch. AA e.167/1. Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, 2008.

The Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress.

eISBN: 978-0-307-79377-5

www.vintagebooks.com

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