Mary Shelley began the story at eighteen during the wet summer of 1816 at Lake Geneva, when Lord Byron challenged his guests to write ghost stories. Published anonymously in 1818 and revised in 1831, the novel is framed by the letters of Robert Walton, an Arctic explorer who rescues an exhausted traveller from the ice.
The traveller is Victor Frankenstein, a gifted young man from Geneva who, as a student at Ingolstadt, becomes obsessed with discovering the secret of life. He assembles a body and succeeds in animating it, but recoils in horror from the being he has made and flees. The creature, left alone, educates himself by secretly watching a cottage family and reading Milton, Plutarch and Goethe, and in the novel's central section tells his own eloquent story of rejection.
Far from the grunting monster of film, Shelley's creature is articulate and sympathetic, and the book asks who the real monster is. It explores scientific ambition, responsibility for what we create, isolation and the need for companionship, themes that still frame debates about technology.
Book details
| Author | Mary Shelley |
|---|---|
| First published | 1818 |
| Original language | English |
| Genre | Science fiction |
| Type | Fiction |
| Pages (approx.) | 280 |
| Setting | Geneva, Ingolstadt, the Alps and the Arctic, 18th century |
Themes
- Scientific ambition
- Creation and responsibility
- Isolation
- Revenge
- Nature of humanity
Who should read it
Readers curious about the origins of science fiction and horror, and anyone interested in the ethics of creation.