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Frankenstein: Or `The Modern Prometheus': The 1818 Text
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Frankenstein: Or `The Modern Prometheus': The 1818 Text Paperback - 2020

by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley; Nick Groom (Editor)


About this book

Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus is a Gothic novel written by Mary Shelley in 1818. The story revolves around Victor Frankenstein, a scientist who creates a monstrous creature and immediately regrets his actions, abandoning the creature to its own devices. The creature, seeking acceptance and revenge, terrorizes Victor and those he loves. Themes of ambition, ethics, humanity, and loneliness are explored through Shelley's vivid descriptions of the natural world and her characters' psychological torment. Frankenstein remains a classic of Gothic literature and a seminal work of science fiction.

Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin wrote the first draft of her groundbreaking novel in 1816, while on a trip to Lake Geneva with her soon-to-be husband, poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, and poet Lord Byron. They were stuck indoors during famously known as the Year Without a Summer.




From the publisher

By the dim and yellow light of the moon, as it forced its way through the window-shutters, I beheld the wretch-the miserable monster whom I had created. He held up the curtain of the bed; and his eyes, if eyes they may be called, were fixed on me. His jaws opened... Frankenstein is the most celebrated horror story ever written. It tells the dreadful tale of Victor Frankenstein, a visionary young student of natural philosophy, who discovers the secret of life. In the grip of his obsession he constructs a being from dead body parts, and animates this creature. The results, for Victor and for his family, are catastrophic. Written when Mary Shelley was just eighteen, Frankenstein was inspired by the ghost stories and vogue for Gothic literature that fascinated the Romantic writers of her time. She transformed these supernatural elements an epic parable that warned against the threats to humanity posed by accelerating technological progress.
Published for the 200th anniversary, this edition, based on the original 1818 text, explains in detail the turbulent intellectual context in which Shelley was writing, and also investigates how her novel has since become a byword for controversial practices in science and medicine, from manipulating ecosystems to vivisection and genetic modification. As an iconic study of power, creativity, and, ultimately, what it is to be human, Frankenstein continues to shape our thinking in profound ways to this day.

First Edition Identification

A small London publishing house, Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor & Jones, first printed Frankenstein: or, the Modern Prometheus in a limited series of just 500 copies on January 1, 1818. By then, Mary was just 20 years old. The first edition was published anonymously in 1818, with a preface by Percy B. Shelley and a dedication to Mary’s father, philosopher William Godwin. Mary Shelley didn’t publicly claim her novel until years later, and her name appears in the second edition, published in 1823. First edition original pasteboards were in blueish gray.

First editions are very scarce and exceptionally rare on the market. In 2021 one of the first 500 copies of the novel was sold at auction for $1.17 million. It was the first Frankenstein first edition copy to be auctioned since 1985.


Details

  • Title Frankenstein: Or `The Modern Prometheus': The 1818 Text
  • Author Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley; Nick Groom (Editor)
  • Binding Paperback
  • Pages 304
  • Volumes 1
  • Language ENG
  • Publisher Oxford University Press, USA
  • Date 2020-01-01
  • ISBN 9780198840824 / 0198840829
  • Weight 0.45 lbs (0.20 kg)
  • Dimensions 7.6 x 5 x 0.6 in (19.30 x 12.70 x 1.52 cm)
  • Themes
    • Chronological Period: 19th Century
    • Sex & Gender: Feminine
  • Dewey Decimal Code 823.7

About the author


Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Nick Groom is Professor in English at the University of Exeter. He has published widely for both academic and popular readerships, and among his many books are The Forger's Shadow (Picador 2002), The Union Jack (Atlantic 2006, rev. edn 2017), The Gothic: A Very Short Introduction (OUP 2012), The Seasons: A Celebration of the English Year (Atlantic 2014), and editions of a variety of eighteenth-century texts, from crime writing to Shakespeare. He has edited Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto (2014), Matthew Lewis's The Monk (2016), and Ann Radcliffe's The Italian (2017) for Oxford World's Classics.
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Frankenstein: or `The Modern Prometheus': The 1818 Text (Oxford World's Classics)

Frankenstein: or `The Modern Prometheus': The 1818 Text (Oxford World's Classics)

by Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft

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Frankenstein : Or `the Modern Prometheus': the 1818 Text

by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

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Frankenstein: Or `The Modern Prometheus': The 1818 Text

by Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft

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Frankenstein: Or `The Modern Prometheus': The 1818 Text
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Frankenstein: Or `The Modern Prometheus': The 1818 Text

by Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft

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Frankenstein: or `The Modern Prometheus': The 1818 Text (Oxford World's Classics)
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Frankenstein: or `The Modern Prometheus': The 1818 Text (Oxford World's Classics)

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by Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft

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Frankenstein: or `The Modern Prometheus': The 1818 Text (Oxford World's Classics)
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Frankenstein: or `The Modern Prometheus': The 1818 Text (Oxford World's Classics)

by Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft

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Frankenstein: or `The Modern Prometheus': The 1818 Text (Oxford World's Classics)
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Frankenstein: or `The Modern Prometheus': The 1818 Text (Oxford World's Classics)

by Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft

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Frankenstein: or `The Modern Prometheus': The 1818 Text (Oxford World's Classics)

by Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft

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Frankenstein: or `The Modern Prometheus': The 1818 Text (Oxford World's Classics)
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Frankenstein: or `The Modern Prometheus': The 1818 Text (Oxford World's Classics)

by Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft

  • Used
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ISBN 13
9780198840824
ISBN 10
0198840829
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