Frankenstein

Mary W. Shelley

Dec 2005 · Prestwick House Inc

About this ebook

Originally written as a response to a challenge from Lord Byron? Frankenstein still haunts our minds with images of the dead brought back to hideous life. Mary Shelley's nineteenth-century masterpiece begins with a fateful rescue in the Arctic and slowly evolves into a gripping story of horror'a contest of wills between Victor Frankenstein and the monster he creates. Wandering through Europe? the confused creature searches for a father figure in the tortured scientist who stitched him together with body parts stolen from the grave. Themes of revenge? the philosophical limits of science? and forbidden knowledge are deeply explored in the greatest Gothic novel ever written. This Prestwick House Literary Touchstone Edition includes a glossary and reader's notes to help the modern reader contend with Shelley's complex vocabulary and references.

Ratings and reviews

I liked the book because of its suspense, that builds up over every page. Though the repetitive, use of same words used all over again did bother me. Plus it's theme was a very life teaching one. The novel is as fresh as it was almost two hundred years ago, recommended .

I was initially going to buy a cheaper version, but what was so wonderful and surprising about this version is u can touch a word you don't know, and it highlights the word, and then a little card pops up that gives you the definition. That was awesome, but that aspect wasn't in the description. Definitely worth a read.

I'm 15 and I've read this book and it's by far one of my favorite books! This is meant for older people, but I couldn't resist. Once I started reading, I couldn't put it down. I loved it so much. Victor's character really hits me in a certain way. All the pain he goes through just disturbs me and me, being immature sometimes, hugged my pillow, wishing it was him so that I could just offer him some sort of ease from that horrible pain of his.

About the author

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was born in England on August 30, 1797. Her parents were two celebrated liberal thinkers, William Godwin, a social philosopher, and Mary Wollstonecraft, a women's rights advocate. Eleven days after Mary's birth, her mother died of puerperal fever. Four motherless years later, Godwin married Mary Jane Clairmont, bringing her and her two children into the same household with Mary and her half-sister, Fanny. Mary's idolization of her father, his detached and rational treatment of their bond, and her step-mother's preference for her own children created a tense and awkward home. Mary's education and free-thinking were encouraged, so it should not surprise us today that at the age of sixteen she ran off with the brilliant, nineteen-year old and unhappily married Percy Bysshe Shelley. Shelley became her ideal, but their life together was a difficult one. Traumas plagued them: Shelley's wife and Mary's half-sister both committed suicide; Mary and Shelley wed shortly after he was widowed but social disapproval forced them from England; three of their children died in infancy or childhood; and while Shelley was an aristocrat and a genius, he was also moody and had little money. Mary conceived of her magnum opus, Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus, when she was only nineteen when Lord Byron suggested they tell ghost stories at a house party. The resulting book took over two years to write and can be seen as the brilliant creation of a powerful but tormented mind. The story of Frankenstein has endured nearly two centuries and countless variations because of its timeless exploration of the tension between our quest for knowledge and our thirst for good. Shelley drowned when Mary was only 24, leaving her with an infant and debts. She died from a brain tumor on February 1, 1851 at the age of 54.