“We are unfashioned creatures, but half made up.” (page 24)
Thus strangely are our souls constructed, and by such slight ligaments are we bound to prosperity or ruin. (page 37)
So much has been done, exclaimed the soul of Frankenstein—more, far more, will I achieve: treading in the steps already marked, I will pioneer a new way, explore unknown powers, and unfold to the world the deepest mysteries of creation. (page 42)
It was on a dreary night of November that I beheld the accomplishment of my toils. With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet. It was already one in the morning; the rain pattered dismally against the panes, and my candle was nearly burnt out, when, 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. (page 51)
I thought I saw Elizabeth, in the bloom of health, walking in the streets of Ingolstadt. Delighted and surprised, I embraced her; but as I imprinted the first kiss on her lips, they became livid with the hue of death; her features appeared to change, and I thought that I held the corpse of my dead mother in my arms. (page 51)
Did any one indeed exist, except I, the creator, who would believe, unless his senses convinced him, in the existence of the living monument of presumption and rash ignorance which I had let loose upon the world? (page 72)
“You accuse me of murder; and yet you would, with a satisfied conscience, destroy your own creature. Oh, praise the eternal justice of man!” (page 90)
“You accuse me of murder; and yet you would, with a satisfied conscience, destroy your own creature. Oh, praise the eternal justice of man!” (page 90)
“When I looked around, I saw and heard of none like me. Was I then a monster, a blot upon the earth, from which all men fled, and whom all men disowned?” (page 107)
“Slave, I before reasoned with you, but you have proved yourself unworthy of my condescension. Remember that I have power; you believe yourself miserable, but I can make you so wretched that the light of day will be hateful to you. You are my creator, but I am your master;—obey !” (page 149)
The fiend was not here: a sense of security, a feeling that a truce was established between the present hour and irresistible, disastrous future, imparted to me a kind of calm forgetfulness, of which the human mind is by its structure peculiarly susceptible. (page 163)
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Frankenstein was first published anonymously in 1818. This text follows Mary Shelley’s revised edition of 1831.
Published in 2003 by Barnes & Noble Classics with new Introduction, Notes, Biography, Chronology, Inspired By, Comments & Questions, and For Further Reading.
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Frankenstein ISBN-13: 978-1-59308-115-7
ISBN-10: 1-59308-115-4
eISBN : 978-1-411-43222-2
LC Control Number 2004101433
Produced and published in conjunction with: Fine Creative Media, Inc. 322 Eighth Avenue New York, NY 10001
Michael J. Fine, President and Publisher
Printed in the United States of America QM 791086
MARY SHELLEY
Though her life was fraught with personal tragedy, Mary Shelley was destined for literary greatness. Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin was born on August 30, 1797, to radically thinking parents: William Godwin, anarchist, philosopher, and author of the novel The Adventures of Caleb Williams (1794), and Mary Wollstonecraft, a well-known proto-feminist who wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Mary Wollstonecraft died from complications of childbirth eleven days after her daughter was born.
At age sixteen, Mary eloped to France with the Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, for which Mary’s father temporarily disowned her. In 1816, Shelley’s first wife, Harriet, whom he had abandoned for Mary, drowned herself in the Serpentine River. Mary and Percy married days after Harriet’s body, pregnant with Shelley’s unborn child, was discovered. The Shelleys moved to the shores of Lake Geneva, and there formed a literary circle that included George Gordon, Lord Byron. The group regularly held all-night discourses on scientific and supernatural topics. After one such discussion, in which Byron suggested a friendly “ghost story” competition, Mary had a dream that became the inspiration for Frankenstein; or, The Modem Prometheus, her first novel. Published anonymously in 1818, Frankenstein was an instant success.
Of the four children Mary had with Percy Shelley, only one lived beyond the age of three: their son Percy Florence. In June 1821, Mary nearly died from the miscarriage of a fifth child. A month later, Shelley drowned in a boating accident in the Gulf of Spezia, at the age of twenty-nine.
Mary Shelley devoted the rest of her life to writing novels, editing Shelley’s poetry for posthumous publication, and traveling with her son. She died on February 1, 1851, and was buried at Bournemouth with her parents.
THE WORLD OF MARY SHELLEY AND FRANKENSTEIN
1765
Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto, the first true Gothic novel, is published.
1789
The French Revolution erupts, signaling the end of the French monarchy, the rise of the middle class, and improvements in the social status of women; this intense and violent revolt has a pro found impact on the Romantic literary movement.
1791
Italian physician Luigi Galvani announces his discovery of “animal electricity,” which manifests in the twitching of nerves and mus cles when an electric current is applied.
1796
Mary Wollstonecraft, author of the proto-feminist essay A Vindi cation of the Rights of Woman and a member of an intellectually radical circle that includes William Blake, William Godwin, Thomas Hol croft, James Johnson, Thomas Paine, and William Wordsworth, begins an affair with Godwin.
1797
The two marry. Mary Wollstonecraft gives birth to Mary Woll stonecraft Godwin and dies from complications eleven days later.
1798
Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge publish The Lyrical Bal lads, a collaboration that helps shape the sensibilities of the Ro mantics.
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