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Cover of Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Fiction

Frankenstein

or, The Modern Prometheus

by Mary Shelley

“That rare story to pass from literature into myth” — The New York Times

About the Book

Mary Shelley's chilling Gothic tale was conceived when she was only eighteen, living with her lover Percy Shelley on Lake Geneva. The story of Victor Frankenstein who, obsessed with creating life itself, plunders graveyards for the material to fashion a new being, but whose botched creature sets out to destroy his maker, would become the world's most famous work of horror fiction, and remains a devastating exploration of the limits of human creativity.

Based on the third edition of 1831, this volume contains all Mary Shelley's revisions to her story, and also includes 'A Fragment' by Lord Byron and Dr John Polidori's 'The Vampyre: A Tale'.

Edited with an Introduction and notes by Maurice Hindle.

Genre
Fiction
Publisher
Penguin Classics

Recognition

  • One of the BBC's '100 Novels That Shaped Our World'

From the publisher's description.

About the Author

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (née Godwin; 30 August 1797 – 1 February 1851) was an English novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer, best known for her Gothic novel Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus (1818). She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic…

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