In which we are introduced to Victor Frankenstein, and he relates his backstory of parental death, sweetheart cousin Elizabeth, best friend Henry, fascination with alchemy, and teachers both supportive and non.
All right, so we've broken through the crunchy, frozen outer shell of the framing device and into the smooth, chocolately Swiss backstory of young Victor. This is actually where an interesting change was put in when Shelley edited the story for the 1831 edition. In the original version we're reading, Elisabeth is Victor's cousin, taken in by Victor's father when his sister (Victor's aunt) dies, and Elizabeth's father decides she'd apparently be better with her uncle than with a stepmother. Reading too much Grimm, perhaps.Spoilers, but Elizabeth and Victor become sweethearts, which was not an uncommon thing back then. Charles Darwin, for instance, married his cousin Emma Wedgwood in 1839.
The 1831 edition, in contrast, not only beefs up how much Victor's parents doted on him, but changes Elizabeth into the daughter of an Italian nobleman who, upon his wife's death, left her with a foster family to raise. When the foster father disappeared at war, the family fell into poverty. Victor's parents, traveling through Italy and being of a charitable mindset, frequented the houses of the poor and came across this foster family. They noticed that one of the children "appeared of a different
stock. The four others were dark-eyed, hardy little vagrants; this child
was thin, and very fair." Obviously, they decided to take this child (and only this child) out of poverty. The family loved her, but wanted the best for her, and so let them take her. Elizabeth was then subsequently given to Victor as a present. Jokingly, but the five-year-old took it seriously.
Personally, I find this 1831 version much creepier and more problematic than the kissing cousins.
Anyway, notes after then jump:
Sunday, November 23, 2014
Tuesday, November 11, 2014
Frankenstein, Volume One, Letters I to IV
In which some guy mounts a voyage to try to sail across the North Pole or something, and meets a mysterious, sorrowful man in the Arctic waste; and in which our narrator goes on at some length on the novel's background information.
FRANKENSTEIN! Yes, the book that essentially invented the entire genre of science fiction, and actually quite different than the story most people are familiar with through adaptations. As discussed at some length in my intro, the story famously grew out of a contest held between Mary (then 18-year-old Mary Godwin); her lover, the married Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley; her also-18-year-old pregnant step-sister, Claire Clairmont; her lover and father of her child, the other major Romantic poet, Lord Byron; and Byron's physician-who-was-also-a-writer John Polidori. They were all visiting Geneva, Switzerland, in the summer of 1816, "The Year Without a Summer," where they spent some prolonged periods inside due to the poor weather and amused themselves by reading ghost stories. Byron suggested a contest where they would each write their own ghost story. Byron started and abandoned a "Fragment of a (vampire) Novel," which Polidori turned into the novella "The Vampyre," generally considered the beginning of the vampire literary genre. Mary, after a period of writer's block, was inspired by a dream to start what would of course become Frankenstein: or, the Modern Prometheus. She worked on it for a couple of years, gave her draft to Percy to fancify-up,* and published it in 1818.
So, there was Mary's more plainspoken, pre-Percy draft (only recently published and which I want), the 1818 edition, and the 1831 "popular" edition. Mary made some major rewrites in this last edition, often stylistic but also with an eye towards making the story more conservative, making the characters more pawns of fate than people who made (or are victims of) bad decisions. This is by far the most reprinted edition, but since I strongly lean towards the free will end of the "destiny" spectrum, I'm going with the 1818 edition. A good rundown of the differences between the editions can be found in this excellent essay by Anne K. Mellor, published in Chapter 9 of her 1988 book Mary Shelley: Her Life, Her Fiction, Her Monsters, which I also want.
Anyway, there are surprisingly few public domain illustrations for this, considering the book has over a hundred years of public domain editions to pull from. The 1831 edition was, for one, but with only two illustrations. I'll include those, but in the meantime I'll fall back on the covers.
This one is from an 1882 edition published by George Routledge and Sons that looks to be part of a series of sixpence reprints that include this one we saw earlier for Sense and Sensibility. And... I don't know about you, but I get a weird USA patriotic vibe from this one. I mean, it's nice to see the monster depicted before he was forever Karloffed (see: pretty much every other cover we'll be looking at), but the red white, and blue color scheme, the military-uniform-looking outfit, the tricorn hat... just me? Okay.
All right, and lastly, a couple of notes. In the Preface at 8:05, the author states that the central conceit of the novel "has been supposed, by Dr. Darwin... as not of impossible occurrence." This is a different Darwin than the one the Time Traveler was referring to, though it's also not Charles. Here, she's talking about Charles's grandfather, Dr. Erasmus Darwin: physician, poet, physiologist, abolitionist, etc. He had some ideas on species and nature that quite clearly prefigured his grandson's famous theory of evolution, touching on ideas that would later be called natural selection and survival of the fittest. Shelley's probably alluding specifically to Darwin's final work, published posthumously in 1803, The Temple of Nature: or, The Origin of Society: A Poem, with Philosophical Notes. Specifically, she probably means the twelfth note, "Chemical Theory of Electricity and Magnetism."
Finally, Walton's reference at 23:33 to "the land of mist and snow" and his further assurance that he wouldn't kill an albatross (and would thus be okay) are references to Samuel Taylor Coleridge's classic 1798 poem, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner." In the poem, a ship is driven by a storm into the Antarctic, from where they are guided out by an albatross. The titular mariner then shoots the bird, for some reason, after which their ship (though now in warmer climes) becomes becalmed in uncharted waters. The crew blames this bad luck on the mariner killing the bird that had saved them, so they force him to wear the dead albatross around his neck in shame. It gets worse from there. But, we don't really care about Walton's fate here, we want to get to Frankenstein!
If you would like to read along, the text can be found at Project Gutenberg. No reading ahead, though!
*Some claim that Percy's contributions were so major that he should be considered at least minor co-author. Some even claim that he's the actual author of the book, and that Mary had little or nothing to do with it. The evidence for these claims generally boils down to "But she's just, like, a CHICK and stuff!"
FRANKENSTEIN! Yes, the book that essentially invented the entire genre of science fiction, and actually quite different than the story most people are familiar with through adaptations. As discussed at some length in my intro, the story famously grew out of a contest held between Mary (then 18-year-old Mary Godwin); her lover, the married Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley; her also-18-year-old pregnant step-sister, Claire Clairmont; her lover and father of her child, the other major Romantic poet, Lord Byron; and Byron's physician-who-was-also-a-writer John Polidori. They were all visiting Geneva, Switzerland, in the summer of 1816, "The Year Without a Summer," where they spent some prolonged periods inside due to the poor weather and amused themselves by reading ghost stories. Byron suggested a contest where they would each write their own ghost story. Byron started and abandoned a "Fragment of a (vampire) Novel," which Polidori turned into the novella "The Vampyre," generally considered the beginning of the vampire literary genre. Mary, after a period of writer's block, was inspired by a dream to start what would of course become Frankenstein: or, the Modern Prometheus. She worked on it for a couple of years, gave her draft to Percy to fancify-up,* and published it in 1818.
So, there was Mary's more plainspoken, pre-Percy draft (only recently published and which I want), the 1818 edition, and the 1831 "popular" edition. Mary made some major rewrites in this last edition, often stylistic but also with an eye towards making the story more conservative, making the characters more pawns of fate than people who made (or are victims of) bad decisions. This is by far the most reprinted edition, but since I strongly lean towards the free will end of the "destiny" spectrum, I'm going with the 1818 edition. A good rundown of the differences between the editions can be found in this excellent essay by Anne K. Mellor, published in Chapter 9 of her 1988 book Mary Shelley: Her Life, Her Fiction, Her Monsters, which I also want.
Anyway, there are surprisingly few public domain illustrations for this, considering the book has over a hundred years of public domain editions to pull from. The 1831 edition was, for one, but with only two illustrations. I'll include those, but in the meantime I'll fall back on the covers.This one is from an 1882 edition published by George Routledge and Sons that looks to be part of a series of sixpence reprints that include this one we saw earlier for Sense and Sensibility. And... I don't know about you, but I get a weird USA patriotic vibe from this one. I mean, it's nice to see the monster depicted before he was forever Karloffed (see: pretty much every other cover we'll be looking at), but the red white, and blue color scheme, the military-uniform-looking outfit, the tricorn hat... just me? Okay.
All right, and lastly, a couple of notes. In the Preface at 8:05, the author states that the central conceit of the novel "has been supposed, by Dr. Darwin... as not of impossible occurrence." This is a different Darwin than the one the Time Traveler was referring to, though it's also not Charles. Here, she's talking about Charles's grandfather, Dr. Erasmus Darwin: physician, poet, physiologist, abolitionist, etc. He had some ideas on species and nature that quite clearly prefigured his grandson's famous theory of evolution, touching on ideas that would later be called natural selection and survival of the fittest. Shelley's probably alluding specifically to Darwin's final work, published posthumously in 1803, The Temple of Nature: or, The Origin of Society: A Poem, with Philosophical Notes. Specifically, she probably means the twelfth note, "Chemical Theory of Electricity and Magnetism."
Finally, Walton's reference at 23:33 to "the land of mist and snow" and his further assurance that he wouldn't kill an albatross (and would thus be okay) are references to Samuel Taylor Coleridge's classic 1798 poem, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner." In the poem, a ship is driven by a storm into the Antarctic, from where they are guided out by an albatross. The titular mariner then shoots the bird, for some reason, after which their ship (though now in warmer climes) becomes becalmed in uncharted waters. The crew blames this bad luck on the mariner killing the bird that had saved them, so they force him to wear the dead albatross around his neck in shame. It gets worse from there. But, we don't really care about Walton's fate here, we want to get to Frankenstein!
If you would like to read along, the text can be found at Project Gutenberg. No reading ahead, though!
*Some claim that Percy's contributions were so major that he should be considered at least minor co-author. Some even claim that he's the actual author of the book, and that Mary had little or nothing to do with it. The evidence for these claims generally boils down to "But she's just, like, a CHICK and stuff!"
Saturday, November 8, 2014
"The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," Part Two
In which Ichabod thoroughly enjoys himself at the party, up until its disappointing end, and has a fateful encounter on the ride home with a horse-mounted man that may or may not have a head.
It's funny, I'd rather forgotten until re-reading this story for the blog that "Sleepy Hollow" doesn't really have any of what you might call "dialogue" in it. Huh.
Illustrations! As last time, the color illustrations are by F. O. C. Darley, 1849, while the black and white ones are by other artists as noted, from 1863.
Oh, first a note for 2:40: the cedar-bird is referred to as wearing a montero cap, which was a type of Spanish hunting cap from the 1600s that has a band going around the crown that can be folded down to protect the ears and/or face, rather like a balaclava.
First, the artist. John Frederick Kensett was one of the most well-known and successful artists in the "second generation" of the Hudson River School. Perhaps his most well-known and longest-lasting contribution to the art world is less his actual work, and more as one of the founders of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Next, the actual illustration. I probably should've mentioned this last time, but the Tappan Zee is a natural widening of the Hudson River (its widest point, in fact). Its name is taken from the Tappan group of the Lenape tribe, though it's unlikely that's what they called themselves, and the Dutch word "zee," meaning "sea." Several times, the story mentions the bluffs along its edge; these are the basalt cliffs known as the Palisades.
More after the break!
It's funny, I'd rather forgotten until re-reading this story for the blog that "Sleepy Hollow" doesn't really have any of what you might call "dialogue" in it. Huh.
Illustrations! As last time, the color illustrations are by F. O. C. Darley, 1849, while the black and white ones are by other artists as noted, from 1863.
Oh, first a note for 2:40: the cedar-bird is referred to as wearing a montero cap, which was a type of Spanish hunting cap from the 1600s that has a band going around the crown that can be folded down to protect the ears and/or face, rather like a balaclava.
 |
| 3:40 - "The Tappan Zee," by John Frederick Kensett |
First, the artist. John Frederick Kensett was one of the most well-known and successful artists in the "second generation" of the Hudson River School. Perhaps his most well-known and longest-lasting contribution to the art world is less his actual work, and more as one of the founders of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Next, the actual illustration. I probably should've mentioned this last time, but the Tappan Zee is a natural widening of the Hudson River (its widest point, in fact). Its name is taken from the Tappan group of the Lenape tribe, though it's unlikely that's what they called themselves, and the Dutch word "zee," meaning "sea." Several times, the story mentions the bluffs along its edge; these are the basalt cliffs known as the Palisades.
More after the break!
Sunday, November 2, 2014
"The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," Part One
In which we are introduced to the town of Sleepy Hollow; its itinerant schoolmaster, Ichabod Crane; wealthy coquette Katrina Van Tassel; and local hero and roustabout Brom Bones; and in which we hear of the local superstition of the headless horseman; and Ichabod departs for a dinner party.
New short story! One of the most enduring examples of early American fiction, "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" was originally published in 1820 as part of The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., a collection of Irving's short works. This book is commonly considered, along with James Fenimore Cooper's The Leatherstocking Tales, one of the first works of American literature to be widely read back in Europe. Perhaps even more than anything by Cooper, "Sleepy Hollow" (and Irving's other best-known work, "Rip Van Winkle," also published in The Sketch Book) is one of those stories that has entered the American lexicon. Even those who've never read the story have an idea what you mean when you describe someone as looking like Ichabod Crane, and the image of the Headless Horseman, brandishing his flaming pumpkin aloft, has indelibly etched itself into our collective brain.
The illustrations I've picked out come from two different sources. The color illustrations are by Felix Octavius Carr Darley (more commonly known by F. O. C. Darley, and who can blame him) from an 1849 printing of The Sketch Book. Darley was considered one of the preeminent "genre" illustrators of the mid-1800s, creating watercolors or line illustrations for Irving, Cooper, Charles Dickens, Edgar Allan Poe, Clement C. Moore, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and many more. The black and white illustrations are from an 1863 edition, and are done by a variety of artists, who will be credited by their respective illustrations. Near as I can tell, only a few of these were actually created specifically to illustrate "Sleepy Hollow;" several are landscapes done by prominent local artists known specifically for, well, landscapes, and not for book illustrations, so I think they were preexisting works pressed into service for this printing. Several of said artists were followers of the Hudson River School of art, which focused on romantic landscapes of the Hudson River Valley and the surrounding mountains.
Oh, and due to the length of this story, I've broken it into two parts, of which this is obviously the first.
This is one of those landscape works I mentioned. William Hart was one of those members of the Hudson River School, and was known for his landscapes involving strong angled sunlight, foreground shadow, and cows. He, uh, painted a lot of cows. He is also the maternal grandfather of E. B. "bet I can make you cry over a spider" White. I haven't been able to figure out for sure who J. H. Hill was, but another of the pictures are by Hart from a sketch of his, so maybe he was some sort of assistant?
Much more after the jump!
New short story! One of the most enduring examples of early American fiction, "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" was originally published in 1820 as part of The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., a collection of Irving's short works. This book is commonly considered, along with James Fenimore Cooper's The Leatherstocking Tales, one of the first works of American literature to be widely read back in Europe. Perhaps even more than anything by Cooper, "Sleepy Hollow" (and Irving's other best-known work, "Rip Van Winkle," also published in The Sketch Book) is one of those stories that has entered the American lexicon. Even those who've never read the story have an idea what you mean when you describe someone as looking like Ichabod Crane, and the image of the Headless Horseman, brandishing his flaming pumpkin aloft, has indelibly etched itself into our collective brain.
The illustrations I've picked out come from two different sources. The color illustrations are by Felix Octavius Carr Darley (more commonly known by F. O. C. Darley, and who can blame him) from an 1849 printing of The Sketch Book. Darley was considered one of the preeminent "genre" illustrators of the mid-1800s, creating watercolors or line illustrations for Irving, Cooper, Charles Dickens, Edgar Allan Poe, Clement C. Moore, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and many more. The black and white illustrations are from an 1863 edition, and are done by a variety of artists, who will be credited by their respective illustrations. Near as I can tell, only a few of these were actually created specifically to illustrate "Sleepy Hollow;" several are landscapes done by prominent local artists known specifically for, well, landscapes, and not for book illustrations, so I think they were preexisting works pressed into service for this printing. Several of said artists were followers of the Hudson River School of art, which focused on romantic landscapes of the Hudson River Valley and the surrounding mountains.
Oh, and due to the length of this story, I've broken it into two parts, of which this is obviously the first.
 |
| 3:21 - "View in Sleepy Hollow," by William Hart (from a sketch by J. H. Hill) |
This is one of those landscape works I mentioned. William Hart was one of those members of the Hudson River School, and was known for his landscapes involving strong angled sunlight, foreground shadow, and cows. He, uh, painted a lot of cows. He is also the maternal grandfather of E. B. "bet I can make you cry over a spider" White. I haven't been able to figure out for sure who J. H. Hill was, but another of the pictures are by Hart from a sketch of his, so maybe he was some sort of assistant?
Much more after the jump!
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