Frankenstein

5b Mary Shelley. Chicago: 1901.

Notes

Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus tells the story of Victor Frankenstein, a young scientist who becomes obsessed with discovering the secret of life and ends up creating a sentient creature from assembled body parts. Horrified by its appearance, Victor abandons the being, who—longing for companionship and acceptance—turns vengeful after repeated rejection. The novel explores themes of ambition, responsibility, isolation, and what it means to be human, ultimately showing how both creator and creation are destroyed by unchecked desire and the failure of empathy.

The idea for Frankenstein was born in the summer of 1816 at Lake Geneva, where Mary Shelley stayed with Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron, and Byron’s physician John Polidori during the famously gloomy “Year Without a Summer.” Confined indoors by relentless storms, Byron proposed a competition to write ghost stories. After struggling for days to think of an idea, Mary experienced a waking dream of a scientist who reanimates a lifeless body—an image that became the seed of Frankenstein. Published anonymously in 1818, the novel gained attention for its daring themes; by the 1820s it was adapted for the stage, growing steadily in cultural impact until it became one of the most influential works in gothic and science fiction literature.

Mary Shelley (1797–1851) was the daughter of two renowned thinkers—political philosopher William Godwin and feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft—giving her an unusually intellectual upbringing for a woman of her era. She began a relationship with the poet Percy Shelley as a teenager, eloping with him despite social scandal. Her life was marked by both literary achievement and personal tragedy, including the early deaths of several of her children and her husband. Beyond Frankenstein, she wrote novels, essays, travel works, and edited Percy Shelley’s writings, establishing a lasting reputation as a pioneering author whose imagination reshaped modern science fiction and gothic literature.

Description 

Tan cloth binding with stylistic design on upper board in orange and blue. General discoloration to binding and foxing to lower board. Browning to interior pages. Minimal fraying to head and foot of spine. Corners minimally bumped. No markings. Very good condition overall.