Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818) is Mary Shelley's novel about a young scientist, Victor Frankenstein, who gives life to a creature made from dead bodies, then abandons it in horror. Begun when the author was eighteen, during a ghost story contest on the shores of Lake Geneva, it is a founding work of both Gothic fiction and science fiction.
The story
The novel opens with letters from Robert Walton, an explorer seeking a passage to the North Pole, who rescues an exhausted man from the ice. The man, Victor Frankenstein, tells him his story: how, as a student at Ingolstadt, he discovered the secret of life and built a living being.
Rejected by its creator and by all who see it, the creature, intelligent and sensitive, learns to speak and read in secret, then turns to revenge, killing those Victor loves. Creator and creation pursue each other to the Arctic, where the narrative returns to Walton's ship.
The summer of 1816
In June 1816, during an unusually cold and stormy summer, Mary Godwin, her future husband Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron and his physician John Polidori were staying near Geneva. Byron suggested that each write a ghost story. Mary's story, which came to her in a waking dream, grew into a novel over the following months.
Frankenstein was published anonymously in London on 1 January 1818, in three volumes, with a preface by Percy Shelley and a dedication to Mary's father, the philosopher William Godwin. In the revised edition of 1831 she added an introduction describing how the book was born.
The Modern Prometheus
The subtitle refers to the Titan Prometheus of Greek myth, who stole fire for mankind and was punished for it. The novel raises questions about scientific ambition, responsibility towards what one creates, and the loneliness of a being rejected by society.
Stage adaptations appeared from 1823, and the 1931 film starring Boris Karloff fixed in the popular imagination an image of the creature, with bolts in its neck, that is very different from the eloquent being of the book.
Anecdotes
Five hundred copies
The first edition of Frankenstein was a modest affair: only about five hundred copies were printed, by a minor publisher, Lackington, after the novel had been turned down by others. A copy of this first edition sold at auction in 2021 for more than a million dollars.
The creature's name on the playbill
In 1823 Mary Shelley saw the first stage adaptation, Presumption, in London, and enjoyed it. She noted with amusement that on the playbill the role of the creature, played by T. P. Cooke, was indicated only by a dash, since the creature has no name.
Frequently asked questions
Is Frankenstein the name of the monster?
No. Victor Frankenstein is the scientist; the creature he makes has no name in the novel.
How old was Mary Shelley when she wrote Frankenstein?
She began it in June 1816, at eighteen, and it was published when she was twenty.
What does The Modern Prometheus mean?
It compares Victor Frankenstein to Prometheus, the Titan of Greek myth who stole fire from the gods for mankind and was punished for his daring.