Frankenstein [Paperback]

200 years after it was first published, Mary Shelley'sFrankensteinhas stood the test of time as a gothic masterpiece—a classic work of humanity and horror that blurs the line between man and monster...

The story of Victor Frankenstein and the monstrous creature he created has held readers spellbound ever since it was published two centuries ago. On the surface, it is a novel of tense and steadily mounting horror; but on a more profound level, it offers searching illumination of the human condition in its portrayal of a scientist who oversteps the bounds of conscience, and of a monster brought to life in an alien world, ever more desperately attempting to escape the torture of his solitude. A novel of hallucinatory intensity,Frankensteinrepresents one of the most striking flowerings of the Romantic imagination.
 
With an Introduction by Douglas Clegg
And an Afterword by Harold Bloom.Born in London,Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797-51) was the daughter of William Godwin, a noted social theorist, and Mary Wollstonecraft, one of the leading literary women of the day. Her mother died soon after her birth, and Mary was raised first under the care of servants, then by a stepmother, and finally in the rarefied intellectual atmosphere of her father’s circle. In May 1814, she met Percy Bysshe Shelley and, in July of the year, moved with him to the Continent. Two years later, after the death of Shelley’s wife, the poet and Mary were able to wed. It was in Switzerland in 1816, as a result of a story-writing competition among the Shelleys and Lord Byron, that Mary beganFrankenstein, her first and most famous novel. Published in 1818, it was followed by such works asValperga(1823),The Last Man(1826), andFalkner(1837). In 1822, after the death of her husband, she devoted herself to the upbringing of her son and the securing of his right to the Shelley family title.
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