Frankenstein Bonus Text: Introduction to the 1832 Edition

In which Mary explicates and perhaps embellishes upon Frankenstein's origin story.



And one final parting shot from Frankenstein before it lumbers off into the sunset! As mentioned way back when we started this book, Shelley rewrote large portions of the original 1818 version for an 1832 edition, and wrote this new introduction for it. I read us the 1818, but feel I should toss this in as well. For an introduction, it's got a surprising number of notes:

4:43 - She mentions that Lord Byron is writing the third canto of Childe Harold, by which she means Childe Harold's Pilgramage, a long, semi-autobiographical narrative poem about a disillusioned young man who broods across the world trying to forget his world-weariness. You can read it here, and see quite literally the invention of the Byronic hero.

5:10 - Here we begin a recounting of the "volumes of ghost stories translated from the German into French" that inspired to story-telling contest that led to Frankenstein. The volume to which she refers is Fantasmagoriana, by an unknown author, published in France in 1812. The French edition was subsequently translated into English by Sarah Utterson in 1820 as Tales of the Dead, which can be read here. She recounts (with variable accuracy) The History of the Inconstant Lover, published in English as The Death-Bride, and "the tale of the sinful founder of his race," which refers to the story The Family Portraits.

5:37 - "in complete armor, but with the beaver up." This is an explicit reference to Horatio's description of the ghost of Hamlet's father, a line that will continue to cause amusement in high school English classes unto eternity. "Beaver," of course, refers to the helmet's visor.

6:23 - Shelley says how Byron published his ghost story as a fragment "at the end of his poem of Mazeppa." Mazeppa (which can be read here) is an 1819 poem of Byron's telling the story of the Ukranian Cossack Ivan Mazepa, most of which is taken up by the hero being tied naked to a horse that is let loose. The "Fragment of a Novel" itself, one of the very first vampire stories in English, inspired Polidori to write the enormously popular and influential novella The Vampyre, which really set the stage for every vampire story to come after it.

6:52 - Polidori's own story for the contest was apparently never published, but recounted here as being about a skull-headed lady punished for looking through a keyhole. Shelley says she "was reduced to a worse condition than the renowned Tom of Coventry." This refers to the tailor who peeked at Lady Godiva's famous nude ride through Coventry to make her husband cut back on the town's taxes. The tailor was rewarded by being struck blind and immortalized in the phrase "peeping Tom."

7:55 - She refers to "Everything must have a beginning" as "speak[ing] in Sanchean phrase," referring to the way Don Quixote's famous sidekick Sancho Panza spouts off proverbs.

8:28 - "Columbus and his egg." Huh, this one seems like something I should've heard of before this. It refers to an apocryphal story about Christopher Columbus, where he responds to criticism that anyone could've made his discovery, and would have eventually anyway, by betting them they couldn't get an egg to stand on its end. They couldn't, and he did by tapping the end to break the shell a bit, flattening it enough to stand on its end. Thus, a brilliant idea that seems simple and obvious after you see someone else do it. Of course, Columbus himself didn't really discover the Americas, so there's that too.

8:59 - "Dr. Darwin." Shelley here mentions the great Dr. Erasmus "grandfather of Charles" Darwin, referring again to his influence on her writing here. Here, though, she specifically mentions the experiments "spoken of as having been done by him" where a piece of vermicelli was preserved in a glass case and spontaneously reanimated. It seems that this is actually a mish-mash of a couple of different things Darwin wrote about in The Temple of Nature, the most pertinent being about dried vorticella (a kind of very simple single-celled organism) coming back to life. "Vermicelli" does in fact literally mean "little worms," but is only ever used to refer to a type of pasta, so... yeah. If this whole thing seems vaguely familiar to you, you probably are remembering this scene from the Mel Brooks classic Young Frankenstein, which is of course a direct reference to this introduction and not anything resembling actual science. (Those of you who listen all the way to the end of the recordings may have noticed that I'm a HUGE fan of Young Frankenstein. If I ever get around to it, I actually have some thoughts on it I may share here.)

Geez, I think these notes are longer than the introduction itself. Anyway, something a little lighter next time!


If you would like to read along, the text can be found at Project Gutenberg.

Frankenstein, Volume One, Chapters Three and Four

In which Victor meddles in Things Man Was Not Meant to Know and, spoilers, grants life to a cobbled-together creature and promptly freaks the hell out, and best friend Henry appears just in time to play nursemaid.



And now we've passed through the chocolately backstory and into the caramel and crazynuts of the main narrative. And boy, once there Shelley really leaps right into making the creature, doesn't she? Interesting to note some major differences from the popular conception of the story (which, of course, largely comes from the movies): Victor's a student, not a doctor. No castle, and no assistant, hunchbacked or otherwise, just Victor by himself in the attic room of his apartment. And, of course, the appearance of the creature himself, with his lustrous black hair and pearly teeth.

One sort of general note: Victor mentions several times his visits to charnel houses during his studies and, eventually, his supply runs. These were vaults where bodies and/or bones were piled up, often those found when digging new graves and sometimes those excavated specifically to make more room (I mean, hey, are you really using that grave five years down the line?)

At 7:50, Victor says he "was like the Arabian who had been buried with the dead, and found a passage to life aided only by one glimmering, and seemingly ineffectual light." This refers to the Fourth Voyage of Sinbad the Sailor, (who, of course, made seven voyages total). In this specific tale, to be brief, Sinbad is rescued from cannibals by other island natives, befriends their king, and is given a wealthy and beautiful wife. She gets sick and dies, and Sinbad learns that their custom is that both spouses are entombed when one dies, the living one given a jug of water and seven rations of bread to, I guess, prolong their agony. Luckily, when these are used up, a new living/dead pair are tossed into the cave, so Sinbad, uh, kills the still-living wife and takes her food (along with all the burial jewels and finery). After this happens several more times, Sinbad's got a nice little hoard of food, water, and wealth going on, until he follows the little light and/or a wild animal out an escape route to the sea. So... yeah.

Oh, and we've got another illustration! Also involving a glimmering light.

17:07 - "By the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull,
yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive
motion agitated its limbs, ... I rushed out of the room."

And... that's it for the illustrations. It's gonna be covers from now on. A few more notes, though:

22:10 - "Like one who, on a lonely road, / Doth walk in fear and dread, / And, having once turn'd round, walks on, / And turns no more his head; / Because he knows a frightful fiend / Doth close behind him tread." While wandering the streets, Victor brings us another reference (this time, a direct quotation) to "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," much as Walton did in the Letters. In case anyone is nit-picky enough to care (and you know I am), these references rather screw with the supposed timeline of the novel. Coleridge's poem was published in 1798, while Walton's letters were dated December 11th, 17—, to August 19th, 17—. It's possible that both Walton and Victor read the poem (Victor closely enough to memorize passages) in the months before heading up to the Arctic, and those m-dashes conceal 1798 to 1799. Sure. But then, Walton mentioned that they were trapped in the ice "last Monday (July 31st), and July 31, 1799 was a Wednesday. Going back, we first find it on a Monday in 1797, a year before "The Rime" was published! God, it's like Shelley didn't research this AT ALL.

At 22:28, we hear about another mode of conveyance: the diligence. This was a form of stagecoach, a big, sturdy carriage drawn by four or more horses used as a mode of public transport. They could usually seat a bunch of passengers and carry a mess of luggage on the roof.

Last, Henry says that his father was like the "Dutch schoolmaster in The Vicar of Wakefield: 'I have ten thousand florins a year without Greek, I eat heartily without Greek.'" The Vicar of Wakefield was a comedic sentimental novel (or possibly a satire of sentimental novels, depending on who you talk to) from the 1760s that remained popular up through and including the Victorian era.

Okay, so monster's created and immediately abandoned. Let's see how well that turns out!


If you would like to read along, the text can be found at Project Gutenberg. No reading ahead, though!

The Marvelous Land of Oz, Chapters Sixteen to Eighteen

In which our heroes gather up a bunch of junk to build a Thing with which they escape the palace, only to get lost in a strange country during the night and crash into a large nest; and in which the narrator begins to lose his patience with Jack Pumpkinhead.



Just a quick note on the Latin phrase used by the Woggle-Bug at 19:30: semper idem, as can be inferred from the context, means "always the same." Idem is the root of the English word "identical," while semper might be familiar as part of the US Marine Corps motto, semper fidelis ("always faithful.") Or, for those of a whimsical bent, the phrase semper ubi sub ubi, which literally translates to "always where under where." Get it? Yeah, I'm sorry. Anyway, semper idem was used as a motto by 17th-century Puritans to describe the unchanging mercy of Christ, and the feminine form, semper eadem, was a motto used by Anne Boleyn, her daughter Queen Elizabeth I, and eventually by Queen Anne. Interesting bit of vaguely related trivia: Anne Boleyn at one point used another (hilarious) motto that she had embroidered on her livery: Ainsi sera, groigne qui groigne, generally translated as "Grumble all you want, this is how it's going to be."

Where was I? Illustrations!

This illustration really seems like it would fit better towards the beginning of the previous channel, but it was put as the prechapter illustration for this one, so there you go.

Not... entirely sure why this chapter gets an image of the Woggle-Bug strutting around as its chapter heading, but there you go again.

More after the jump!

The Marvelous Land of Oz, Chapters Four to Six

In which our heroes discover a need for a conveyance of some sort and thus dabble in the dark arts, producing another member of the company; it is demonstrated that said member both walks and swims well, and runs perhaps too well, and the Emerald City is reached.



No notes, though I suppose I should point out that we've got our very first returning characters on Rob Reads to You, with the arrival of (or, more properly, at) the Guardian of the Gates and the Soldier with the Green Whiskers. I had to go back and listen to myself to make sure that, yup, I was basically using the Guardian of the Gates's voice for the Saw-Horse, so he might now sound somewhat more clipped and official than on our last visit.

Anyway, lots of illustrations again!

 More after the break!

The Marvelous Land of Oz, Chapters One to Three

In which a young boy makes a pumpkin-headed man to scare his wicked guardian and is surprised what she does with him, following which he runs away to escape her somewhat harsh punishment; and in which our narrator goes on at rather extreme length before we even get to the story.



The Marvelous Land of Oz was published in 1904, four years after The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and two years after Baum's highly successful stage version of the latter. As such, there are definitely elements of this book that seem to be written with an eye towards the stage. The book is notable among Baum's fourteen original Oz books as one of the few to have a male protagonist, and the only one not to feature Dorothy at all.

This book is also notable for bringing on board a new illustrator. Apparently, Baum and W. W. Denslow, the illustrator of the original, argued over royalties to that 1902 stage version. Denslow had designed the sets and costumes and was co-holder of the copyright of the book, and thus thought he deserved an equal share with Baum and the music composer. Baum disagreed and decided not to work with him again. Don't feel too bad for Denslow, though. The royalties he did receive from the book and the musical were enough for him to purchase an island in Bermuda and declare himself King Denslow I. (Though it seems he sold it again by 1908. So much for the dynasty.)

Thus, instead of Denslow, this book is illustrated by John R. Neill, who would go on to illustrate more than forty different Oz books, including all of the rest of the "Famous Forty" canonical Oz books, minus four that came out after his death in 1943 but including three that he wrote himself. Neill's style rather obviously became the "definitive" style that at least influenced all other Oz illustrators who followed, if they didn't mimic him outright.

Now, while Denslow's illustrations were all in color (even if it was usually only one or two colors), Neill's illustrations here are mostly line drawings, with sixteen full-color plates throughout. The quantity of illustrations, though, remains quite large. AS such, much with the last book, I won't be time-tagging them, as they come a little too thick and fast.

The color plates here come from Old Book Art, the full-page black and white illustrations come from the facsimile of the first edition at OpenLibrary.org, and the remaining line drawings are all from Classics Illustrated (but no, not that Classics Illustrated.) And since this is the first installment, I've included the preliminary illustrations:

Above is the copyright page, showing play posters being pasted up, presumably as a nod to the stage version.

See more after the jump!