Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus

About this book

Frankenstein is a novel by Mary Shelley, begun when she was eighteen and published anonymously in 1818. Its origin is well documented: in the summer of 1816 Shelley, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron, and John Polidori were staying near Lake Geneva during an unusually cold and wet season, and Byron proposed that each of them write a ghost story. Shelley’s contribution grew into this book. The subtitle refers to the Titan who, in Greek myth, made humans from clay and stole fire for them.

The novel is often described as one of the first works of science fiction because its central event, the creation of a living being, is presented as the result of study and experiment rather than magic. It is also a Gothic novel, with remote settings, extreme weather, and a narrative built from nested first-person accounts. Those two strands, speculative science and Gothic emotion, are a large part of why it is still read and taught.

The story

The novel opens with letters from Robert Walton, an explorer leading an expedition toward the North Pole, to his sister in England. Walton’s ship takes on board a half-frozen stranger, Victor Frankenstein, who tells Walton his history. Victor grew up in Geneva, studied natural philosophy at the University of Ingolstadt, and became obsessed with the principle of life. Working alone, he assembled and animated a creature, then fled from it in horror.

The abandoned creature is left to make sense of the world on its own, and its account, delivered to Victor later in the book, forms the novel’s center. Victor’s refusal of responsibility and the creature’s demand for companionship set the two on a collision course that reaches from the Alps to the Arctic.

Themes and historical context

Shelley was the daughter of two radical writers, Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin, and the novel reflects a serious engagement with ideas about education, society, and how a person’s character is formed. The creature’s development, from a being that is naturally curious and affectionate to one that is bitter and violent, follows the logic that mistreatment produces cruelty. The book asks what a maker owes to what it makes, and it does not let Victor off easily.

The scientific background is real. Experiments with electricity and the idea that it might be linked to life were widely discussed in the early nineteenth century, and Shelley’s 1831 introduction mentions such discussions. The novel does not explain Victor’s method, which is one reason it has aged well.

Early reviews were mixed, with some critics objecting to the book’s premise. It found an audience quickly all the same and was adapted for the stage within a few years. The many film versions that followed have made the name Frankenstein universal, though they often give it to the creature rather than its creator, and they rarely preserve the creature’s eloquence, which is central to the book.

Who should read it

Frankenstein is short for a classic novel, around 75,000 words, and the plot is simple to follow once the frame structure is clear. The prose is formal and emotional in the manner of its period, with long passages of description and reflection; readers who want a fast pace may find the middle sections slow. It suits anyone interested in the history of science fiction, in Romantic-era writing, or in the ethical questions the book raises. People who know the story only through films should expect something more thoughtful and more melancholy.

Edition notes

Project Gutenberg #84 was prepared by Judith Boss, Christy Phillips, Lynn Hanninen, and David Meltzer, with an HTML version by Al Haines and later corrections by Menno de Leeuw. The record does not state which of the two main editions (1818 or 1831) the text follows, so readers comparing it with a scholarly edition should check.