Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus is a novel written by the British author Mary Shelley. Shelley wrote the novel when she was 18 years old. The first edition was published anonymously in London in 1818. Shelley's name appears on the revised third edition, published in 1831. The title of the novel refers to a scientist, Victor Frankenstein, who learns how to create life and creates a being in the likeness of man, but larger than average and more powerful. In modern popular culture, people have tended to refer to the Creature as "Frankenstein" (especially in films since 1931), despite this being the name of the scientist. Frankenstein is a novel infused with some elements of the Gothic novel and the Romantic movement. It was also a warning against the "over-reaching" of modern man and the Industrial Revolution, alluded to in the novel's subtitle, The Modern Prometheus. The story has had an influence across literature and popular culture and spawned a complete genre of horror stories and films. It is arguably considered the first fully realized science fiction novel. The novel raises many issues that can be linked to today's society.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (30 August 1797 – 1 February 1851) was a British novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, travel writer, and editor of the works of her husband, Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley. She was the daughter of the political philosopher William Godwin and the writer, philosopher, and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft. Mary Shelley is best known for her Gothic novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818). Find out more »
After the death of Mary Wollstonecraft eleven days after her daughter's birth, Mary Godwin was brought up, along with her older sister Fanny Imlay, by William Godwin. When she was three, he married his neighbour, Mary Jane Clairmont. Mary Godwin received a rich, if informal, education under William Godwin, who brought her up to believe in his liberal political theories, including republicanism, radicalism, and the perfectibility of man.
In 1814, Mary Godwin fell in love with the married philosopher-poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, one of William Godwin's political followers. That summer, despite her father's disapproval, the couple eloped to France, along with Mary's step-sister, Claire Clairmont. The three travelled through France to Switzerland and returned along the Rhine, by which time Mary Godwin was clearly pregnant. Over the next two years, the couple was ostracized, in constant debt, and lost their prematurely born daughter. They married in late 1816 after the suicide of Percy Shelley's first wife.
In 1817, they spent a famous summer with Lord Byron, John William Polidori, and Claire Clairmont near Geneva, Switzerland, where Mary conceived the idea for her novel Frankenstein. In 1818, the Shelleys left Britain for Italy, where their second and third child died before Mary Shelley gave birth to her last and only surviving child, Percy Florence. In 1822, Percy Bysshe Shelley drowned when his sailing boat sank during a storm in the Bay of Spezia. A year later, Mary Shelley returned to England. Though she had offers, she never remarried. Instead, she devoted herself to the upbringing of her son and a career as a professional author. The death of her father-in-law in 1844 left her financially comfortable for the first time in her life, but her last decade was dogged by illness, probably caused by the brain tumour that killed her at the age of 53.
