Home > Fiction & Literature > Classics > Frankenstein

Frankenstein

List Price: $4.95

Save 5.0%

You Pay: $4.70

Want this eBook?Our eBook Library Software is required to purchase and download eBooks. Download it here.

Tell a Friend

Overview

Frankenstein is a masterpiece of nineteenth-century Gothicism and the prototype of the twentieth-century science-fiction novel. It was conceived in theSwiss Alps in mid-June 1816 after a conversation about bringing corpses to life provoked a nightmare, and was written over the next eleven months in largely morbid circumstances. Death and the terrors of childbirth -- as much as Romanticism, a burgeoning awareness of unconscious drives, and contemporary ideas of atheism, the collapse of the social contract, and the corrupting influence of society on human nature -- inform this story of aman (or monster) built by Dr. Victor Frankenstein and brought to life by electricity. The monster's culpability for various horrific acts, his powerlessness in the face of his complete ostracism from society, and Dr. Frankenstein's lies, abdication of responsibility, and the pain he inflicts on his creation raised chilling questions that made the novel an immediate bestseller.

Editorial Reviews

Editorial Reviews for this product are not available at this time.

Author Information

Bio of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

( 1797 AD - 1851 AD), English Romantic novelist, biographer and editor, best known as the author of Frankenstein. She was born in London. Her father, William Godwin was the writer and political journalist. She got educated amongst her father's intellectual circle, the critic Hazlitt, the essayist Lamb, the poet Coleridge, and Percy Bysshe Shelley. Mary authored many fine literary works. *** SHELLEY, MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT (1797-1851), English writer, only daughter of William Godwin and his wife Mary Wollstonecraft, and second wife of the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, was born in London on the 30th of August 1797. When she was in Switzerland with Shelley and Byron in 1816 a proposal was made that various members of the party should write a romance or tale dealing with the supernatural. The result of this project was that Mrs Shelley wrote Frankenstein. Frankenstein, published in 1818, when Mrs Shelley was at the utmost twenty-one years old, is a very remarkable performance for so young and inexperienced a writer; its main idea is that of the formation and vitalization, by a deep student of the secrets of nature, of an adult man, who, entering the world thus under unnatural conditions, becomes the terror of his species, a half-involuntary criminal, and finally an outcast whose sole resource is self-immolation. This romance was followed by others: Valperga, or the Life and Adventures of Castruccio, Prince of Lucca (1823), an historical tale written with a good deal of spirit; The Last Man (1826), a fiction of the final agonies of human society owing to the universal spread of a pestilence; The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck (1830); Lodore (1835), and Falkner (1837). Besides these novels there was the Journal of a Six Weeks' Tour which is published in conjunction with Shelley's prose-writings; and Rambles in Germany and Italy in 1840-1842-1843 (which shows an observant spirit, capable of making some true forecasts of the future), and various miscellaneous writings. After the death of Shelley, for whom she had a deep and even enthusiastic affection, Mrs Shelley in the autumn of 1823 returned to London. In 1838 she edited Shelley's works, supplying the notes that throw such invaluable light on the subject. She died on the 21st of February 1851.

Customer Reviews

There are no customer reviews available at this time. To add your review, Register or Sign In to your account using our free eBook Library Software.

Additional Info

Imprint

Modern Library

Filesize

504.39 KB

Number of Pages

272

eBook ISBN

9780679640066

Excerpt from: Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

YOU WILL rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings. I arrived here yesterday; and my first task is to assure my dear sister of my welfare, and increasing confidence in the success of my undertaking.

I am already far north of London; and as I walk in the streets of Petersburgh, I feel a cold northern breeze play upon my cheeks, which braces my nerves, and fills me with delight. Do you understand this feeling? This breeze, which has travelled from the regions towards which I am advancing, gives me a foretaste of those icy climes. Inspirited by this wind of promise, my day dreams become more fervent and vivid. I try in vain to be persuaded that the pole is the seat of frost and desolation; it ever presents itself to my imagination as the region of beauty and delight. There, Margaret, the sun is for ever visible; its broad disk just skirting the horizon, and diffusing a perpetual splendour. There--for with your leave, my sister, I will put some trust in preceding navigators--there snow and frost are banished; and, sailing over a calm sea, we may be wafted to a land surpassing in wonders and in beauty every region hitherto discovered on the habitable globe. Its productions and features may be without example, as the phenomena of the heavenly bodies undoubtedly are in those undiscovered solitudes. What may not be expected in a country of eternal light? I may there discover the wondrous power which attracts the needle; and may regulate a thousand celestial observations, that require only this voyage to render their seeming eccentricities consistent for ever. I shall satiate my ardent curiosity with the sight of a part of the world never before visited, and may tread a land never before imprinted by the foot of man. These are my enticements and they are sufficient to conquer all fear of danger or death, and to induce me to commence this laborious voyage with the joy a child feels when he embarks in a little boat, with his holiday mates, on an expedition of discovery up his native river. But, supposing all these conjectures to be false, you cannot contest the inestimable benefit which I shall confer on all mankind to the last generation, by discovering a passage near the pole to those countries, to reach which at present so many months are requisite; or by ascertaining the secret of the magnet which, if at all possible, can only be effected by an undertaking such as mine.

These reflections have dispelled the agitation with which I began my letter, and I feel my heart glow with an enthusiasm which elevates me to heaven; for nothing contributes so much to tranquillise the mind as a steady purpose--a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye. This expedition has been the favourite dream of my early years. I have read with ardour the accounts of the various voyages which have been made in the prospect of arriving at the North Pacific Ocean through the seas which surround the pole. You may remember that a history of all the voyages made for purposes of discovery composed the whole of our good uncle Thomas's library. My education was neglected, yet I was passionately fond of reading. These volumes were my study day and night, and my familiarity with them increased that regret which I had felt, as a child, on learning that my father's dying injunction had forbidden my uncle to allow me to embark in a seafaring life.