About This Book

This was Mary Shelley's first and most successful novel. The story has been popularized in numerous films — and in more than one camp-fire ghost story. It is very different from the movie, however. Rather than a horror story about an inarticulate monster, it is more the sad history of a tormented human soul, outcast through no fault of its own.

The book, is also something of an inditement of science run amok -- a popular notion in the 18th century as well as those since. It told with frightening realism . . . and given the recent advancements in biological technology, how far is it from tomorrow's actuality, now that we have completely mapped the human genetic code?

About Mary Wollstonecraft ( Godwin ) Shelley

(1797-1851) Mary Shelley, daughter of the English economist and bookseller, William Godwin, was barely eighteen years old when she eloped with the poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley. She was 21, at most, when her great horror novel, Frankenstein was written. The book was created as the result of friendly contest among the Shelleys, the poet Byron, and their guests. They were competing to see who could write the most effective horror fantasy; history has judged that Mary Shelley won.

There have been many sequels to the Frankenstein story, but none were written by Shelley herself. Her several other books were none as well-written or as successful. Even so, she is remembered not only as the wife of the great poet, but as an author in her own right, as well.