Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797-1851) is by far best known for her legendary 1818 novel,
Frankenstein, Or: The Modern Prometheus, in which she essentially invented the genre of science fiction. Married, at the time, to the Romantic poet
Percy Bysshe Shelley (who purpled up the prose of
Frankenstein quite a bit), she famously came up with the idea for the story for a ghost-story competition during "Year Without a Summer" between her, Percy,
Lord Byron, Mary's step-sister and Byron's lover
Claire Clairmont, and
John William Polidori, and wouldn't you have liked to be a fly on the wall for
that gathering. She went on to write several other novel, travelogues, and biographies and appears to have been rather a political radical, possibly influenced by the works (if not the specific ideas) of her father, anarchistic philosopher
William Godwin, and her mother, noted women's rights activist and philosopher
Mary Wollstonecraft (whom Mary Shelley herself never knew).
Frankenstein: Or, The Modern Prometheus (1818 text)
In which young Victor Frankenstein brings a creature to life, then promptly abandons it. The creature is. . . not happy.
Notes and Illustrations:
- Volume One, Letters I to IV
- Volume One, Chapters One and Two
- Volume One, Chapters Three and Four
- Volume One, Chapters Five and Six
- Volume One, Chapter Seven
- Volume Two, Chapters One and Two
- Volume Two, Chapters Three and Four
- Volume Two, Chapters Five to Seven
- Volume Two, Chapters Eight and Nine
- Volume Three, Chapters One and Two
- Volume Three, Chapter Three
- Volume Three, Chapter Four
- Volume Three, Chapters Five and Six
- Volume Three, Chapter Seven
- Bonus text - Introduction to the 1832 Edition
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