Original Frankenstein

In the summer of 1816, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, wrote the first draft of "Frankenstein" after she and her lover Percy Bysshe Shelley took part in a ghost writing competition at Lord Byron's villa by Lake Geneva. Returning to England in the autumn of 1816, she and Percy heavily revised the draft with the result that the two standard editions of 1818 and 1831 are at some remove from Mary Shelley's original text. Until now, no one has been able to read what Mary Shelley herself initially wrote. Going back to the unique draft manuscript of the text held in the Bodleian Library, Charlie E. Robinson has teased out Percy Shelley's amendments, separating them from the story in Mary Shelley's hand. The results are fascinating. We see a markedly different arrangement of the work in completely different chapters. Most importantly, we hear Mary's voice which sounds to us more modern, more immediately colloquial than her husband's learned, more polished style. To this day, "Frankenstein" remains the most popular work of science fiction. This edition promises to redefine the way we read the story and how we perceive the act of its creation.