Frankenstein: Or the Modern Prometheus (Penguin Classics)

by Mary Shelley (Author), Maurice Hindle (Editor), Mary Shelley (Author), Maurice Hindle (Editor), Mary Shelley (Author)

• Used

  Illustrated
  2003

  $11.78

  A terrifying vision of scientific progress without moral limits, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein leads the reader on an unsettling journey from the sublime beauty of the Swiss alps to the desolate waste of the arctic circle. This Penguin Classics edition is edited with an introduction and notes by Maurice Hindle. Obsessed with the idea of creating life itself, Victor Frankenstein plunders graveyards for the material with which to fashion a new being, shocking his creation to life with electricity. But this botched creature, rejected by its creator and denied human companionship, sets out to destroy Frankenstein and all that he holds dear. Mary Shelley's chilling gothic tale was conceived when she was only eighteen, living with her lover Percy Shelley near Lord Byron's villa on Lake Geneva. It would become the world's most famous work of Gothic horror, and Frankenstein's monster an instantly-recognisable symbol of the limits of human creativity. Based on the third edition of 1831, this volume contains all the revisions Mary Shelley made to her story, as well as her 1831 introduction and Percy Shelley's preface to the first edition. This revised edition includes as appendices a select collation of the texts of 1818 and 1831 together with 'A Fragment' by Lord Byron and Dr John Polidori's 'The Vampyre: A Tale'. Mary Shelley (1797-1851) was the only daughter of the author and political philosopher William Godwin, and Mary Wollstonecraft, author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. In 1814 she eloped with poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, whom she married when his first wife died in 1816. She is best remembered as the author of Frankenstein, but she wrote several other works, including Valperga and The Last Man. If you liked Frankenstein, you might enjoy Bram Stoker's Dracula, also available in Penguin Classics.

• Used

  Paperback
  1994

  $3.23

  Frankenstein was Mary Shelley's powerful contribution to the ghost stories which she, Percy Shelley and Byron wrote one wet summer in Switzerland. It tells the story of how a young student of natural philosophy learns the secret of imparting life to a creature constructed from relics of the dead, with horrific consequences. The story confronts some of the most feared innovations of evolutionism - topics such as degeneracy, hereditary disease and mankind's status as a species of animal. The text used here is the 1818 edition, which is a mocking expose of leaders and achievers who leave desolation in their wake, showing mankind its choice - to live co-operatively or to die of selfishness. It is also a black comedy, and harder and wittier than the 1831 edition, with which readers are more familiar. Drawing on new research, Marilyn Butler examines the novel in the context of the radical sciences, which were developing among much controversy in the years following the Napoleonic Wars, and shows how Frankenstein's experiment relateds to a contemporary debate between the champions of materialist science and of received religion. Marilyn Butler is the editor of Shelley's The Last Man , co-editor (with Pickering) of Works of Mary Wollstonecraft , and the author of Romantics, Rebels and Reactionaries .

• Used

  Hardcover
  1996

  $19.69

• New

  Paperback
  2003

  $18.98

  An engaging classroom playscript. Frankenstein is the famous story of a young man who thinks he can change the world by making better human beings. Instead he creates a living monster with a mind of its own. New, innovative activities specifically tailored to support the KS3 Framework for Teaching English and help students to fulfil the Framework objectives. Activities include work on Speaking and Listening, close text analysis, and the structure of playscripts, and act as a springboard for personal writing.