Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus - Mary Shelley (1818)

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This is the revised 1831 edition of FRANKENSTEIN; OR THE MODERN PROMETHEUS, a novel written by English author Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley about young science student Victor Frankenstein, who creates a grotesque but sentient creature in an unorthodox scientific experiment. Shelley began writing the story when she was eighteen and the novel was published when she was twenty. The first edition was published anonymously in London in 1818. Shelley's name appears in the second edition, published in France in 1823. Shelley had traveled through Europe in 1814, traveling along the River Rhine in Germany with a stop at Gernsheim, which is only 17 km from Frankenstein Castle, where, two centuries earlier, an alchemist was conducting experiments. Subsequently, she traveled to the region of Geneva (Switzerland) - where much of the story takes place - and the topic of galvanism and other similar occult ideas were topics of conversation among her companions, particularly her lover and future husband, Percy Shelley. Mary, Percy, Lord Byron, and John Polidori decided to have a contest to see who could write the best horror story. After thinking for days, Shelley dreamed of a scientist who created life and was horrified by what he had created; His dream then evolved into the story of the novel. Shelley completed his writing in May 1817 and Frankenstein; or The Modern Prometheus was first published on March 11, 1818 by the small London publishing house of Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor and Jones. The second edition of Frankenstein was published on August 11, 1822 in two volumes (by G. and W. B. Whittaker) following the success of the play Conceit; or the Fate of Frankenstein by Richard Brinsley Peake; This edition credits Mary Shelley as the author. On October 31, 1831, the first "popular" single-volume edition appeared, published by Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley. This edition was heavily revised by Mary Shelley, partly due to pressure to make the story more conservative, and included a new, longer preface to it, which presented a somewhat embellished version of the story's genesis. This edition tends to be the most widely read today, although editions containing the original 1818 text are still published. Many scholars prefer the 1818 text, arguing that it retains the spirit of Shelley's original publication.
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Frankenstein (Fictional Character), Frankenstein's Monster (Fictional Character), Fiction, Victor Frankenstein (Fictional Character), Scientists, Monsters, Fiction, horror, Frankenstein (fictional character), fiction, Doctors, fiction, British fiction (fictional works of an author), Scientists, fiction, Geneva (Switzerland), fiction, Children's fiction, Horror stories, Fiction, science fiction, general, Fiction, general, Horror stories, Frankenstein (Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft), Large Print Books, English Fiction, Study Guides, Exams, Criticism and Interpretation, Gothic Fiction, English Language, Textbooks for Foreign Speakers, Reading Comprehension, Monsters, Fiction, English Literature, Comics and Graphic Novels, Science Fiction, Comics and Graphic Novels, Horror, Comics, Comic Strips, etc., Comics and Graphic Novels literary, Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft, 1797-1851, English fiction (collections), 19th century, Literature and fiction, horror and ghost stories, Readers, Science fiction, history and criticism, Horror stories, history and criticism, Children's stories, Monstrous, Novel, History and criticism, Horror fiction, British and Irish fiction (works of fiction by a single author), Historical fiction, general, literary criticism, English science fiction, English horror stories, Scie