Frankenstein - Original 1818 Uncensored Version - Softcover

Shelley, Mary

Softcover

ISBN 10: 149731982X ISBN 13: 9781497319820

Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2014

Synopsis

“It was on a dreary night of November that I beheld my man completed ..."

In the summer of 1816, a young, well-educated woman from England traveled with her lover to the Swiss Alps. Unseasonable rain kept them trapped inside their lodgings, where they entertained themselves by reading ghost stories. At the urging of renowned poet Lord Byron, a friend and neighbor, they set their own pens to paper, competing to see who could write the best ghost story.

The young woman, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, took the prize, with her tale of eccentric scientist Victor Frankenstein, who creates a grotesque creature in an unorthodox scientific experiment. ‘Frankenstein’ became a bestseller and a Gothic classic that still resonates with readers almost two centuries later...

This is the original, 1818 text. In 1831, the more traditionally first "popular" edition in one volume appeared.This version of the story was heavily revised by Mary Shelley who was under pressure to make the story more conservative, and included a new, longer preface by her, presenting a somewhat embellished version of the genesis of the story. This edition tends to be the one most widely read now but many scholars prefer the 1818 text, arguing that it preserves the spirit of Shelley's original publication.

About this title

Review:

Frankenstein, loved by many decades of readers and praised by such eminent literary critics as Harold Bloom, seems hardly to need a recommendation. If you haven't read it recently, though, you may not remember the sweeping force of the prose, the grotesque, surreal imagery, and the multilayered doppelgänger themes of Mary Shelley's masterpiece. As fantasy writer Jane Yolen writes of this (the reviewer's favorite) edition, "The strong black and whites of the main text [illustrations] are dark and brooding, with unremitting shadows and stark contrasts. But the central conversation with the monster--who owes nothing to the overused movie image ... but is rather the novel's charnel-house composite--is where [Barry] Moser's illustrations show their greatest power ... The viewer can all but smell the powerful stench of the monster's breath as its words spill out across the page. Strong book-making for one of the world's strongest and most remarkable books." Includes an illuminating afterword by Joyce Carol Oates.

Book Description:

A collection of literature anthologies and reference books for Key Stage 3 onwards.

About this edition

• Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 149731982X
• ISBN 13: 9781497319820
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 166