Frankenstein (illustrated)

Frankenstein (illustrated)

FRANKENSTEIN is widely regarded as a landmark work of romantic and gothic literature.
â€œMary Shelleyâ€™s first novel has been hailed as a masterpiece.â€ (The Guardian: The 100 Best Novels).
â€œThe book blew me away. Here is a creator, Victor Frankenstein, scared of his own creation and unable to take responsibility for it.â€ (The Independent: Book of a Lifetime)

This illustrated edition of Mary Shelleyâ€™s classic novel includes:
- the preface by Percy Bysshe Shelley
- the introduction by Mary Shelley
- the complete text from the 1831 edition
- an illustrated history of the storyâ€™s creation
- the cover design features the original frontispiece from the 1831 edition (by Theodor von Holst)

READERSâ€™ REVIEWS
â€œThe work impresses us with a high idea of the authorâ€™s original genius and happy power of expression.â€ â€“ Walter Scott
â€œNot what I expected. It was better.â€
â€œHaving only seen the films, I never realised how touching and extraordinarily sad this story really is.â€
â€œA gem. One of my all-time favourite stories.â€
â€œThis book was so hard to put down. Kept me gripped.â€
â€œAn excellent novel. Filled with suspense and tension.â€

THE STORY BEHIND THE STORY
The writing of Frankenstein was influenced by two volcanic eruptions, one in Indonesia and one in the authorâ€™s private life.
When she was nearly 17 years old, Mary Godwin fell in love with one of her fatherâ€™s political followers, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, who was nearly 22 years old and already married.
Despite the disapproval of her father â€“ the political philosopher William Godwin â€“ Mary and Percy eloped to France.
In the summer of 1816 Mary and Percy visited Lord Byron at the Villa Diodati near Lake Geneva.
They had planned numerous outdoor activities but the days were cold and dreary. Unknown to them, a volcano in Indonesia, Mount Tambora, had erupted with drastic effects on the global climate. The year 1816 was known as the â€œYear Without a Summerâ€.
â€œIt proved a wet, ungenial summer,â€ wrote Mary, â€œand incessant rain often confined us for days to the house.â€
Mary and her group of friends amused themselves by reading ghost stories in a book called Fantasmagoriana.
Lord Byron suggested that they should â€œeach write a ghost storyâ€.
At first Mary was embarrassed that she couldnâ€™t think of anything to write. Then one night Mary went to bed after midnight but was unable to sleep. During this â€œwaking dreamâ€ she devised the plot of Frankenstein.
Mary later described that summer in Switzerland as the moment â€œwhen I first stepped out from childhood into lifeâ€.
She conceived â€˜Frankensteinâ€™ as a short story but, encouraged by Percy Shelley, expanded it into a novel.
Maryâ€™s novel, though not her relationship with Percy Shelley, earned her fatherâ€™s approval. He later wrote to her: â€œ[Frankenstein] is the most wonderful work to have been written at twenty years of age that I have ever heard of. You are now five and twenty. And, most fortunately, you have pursued a course of reading, and cultivated your mind in a manner the most admirably adapted to make you a great and successful author.â€
Percy drowned in 1822, less than a month before his 30th birthday, when his sailing boat sank during a storm on the Gulf of Spezia.
In 1826 Mary received a marriage proposal from an American actor, John Howard Payne, but she refused him, saying that after being married to one genius, she could only marry another.
Country USA
Binding Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate 2015-05-15
Format Kindle eBook

Country	USA
Binding	Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate	2015-05-15
Format	Kindle eBook

Frankenstein (illustrated)

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