The Modern Prometheus (World's Classics S.)

by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (Author), Marilyn Butler (Editor), Marilyn Butler (Editor), Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  1994

  $4.62

  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

  Paperback
  1994

  $3.46

  'I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life and stir with an uneasy, half-vital motion.' A summer evening's ghost stories, lonely insomnia in a moonlit Alpine's room, and a runaway imagination -- fired by philosophical discussions with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley about science, galvanism, and the origins of life -- conspired to produce for Mary Shelley this haunting night specter. By morning, it had become the germ of her Romantic masterpiece, Frankenstein. Written in 1816 when she was only 19, Mary Shelley's novel of 'The Modern Prometheus' chillingly dramatized the dangerous potential of life begotten upon a laboratory table. A frightening creation myth for our own time, Frankenstein remains one of the greatest horror stories ever written and is an undisputed classic of its kind.

• New

  Paperback
  2009

  $13.95

• New

  Hardcover
  1992

  $17.39

  The fable of the scientist who creates a man-monster is one of the best known horror stories ever. It has fascinated readers ever since it was first published in 1818.