Frankenstein: The 1818 Text

“Gordon’s framing is the real standout of the anniversary edition (…) Highly recommended.”
— N. K. Jemisin, The New York Times Book Review

“ Frankenstein is as efficient and resonant a reference today as it was in 1818. . . In this bicentennial year, much will be written about Frankenstein , its adaptations, and whether there exists a definitive or superior version of the novel. . . The 1818 Text is reflective of the thrill and nervous energy that ushered in a new era of science and society. . . But part of what makes it a little unsettling is what makes it so interesting: The chance to watch a 200-year-old novel develop. In a story that's reflected so much of the last two hundred years, and centers so much on choices, storytelling, and the potential for change, it only makes sense that Frankenstein reflects changes within its own creator”
—Genevieve Valentine, NPR



“Gordon’s framing is the real standout of the anniversary edition (…) Highly recommended.”
— N. K. Jemisin, The New York Times Book Review

“ Frankenstein is as efficient and resonant a reference today as it was in 1818. . . In this bicentennial year, much will be written about Frankenstein , its adaptations, and whether there exists a definitive or superior version of the novel. . . The 1818 Text is reflective of the thrill and nervous energy that ushered in a new era of science and society. . . But part of what makes it a little unsettling is what makes it so interesting: The chance to watch a 200-year-old novel develop. In a story that's reflected so much of the last two hundred years, and centers so much on choices, storytelling, and the potential for change, it only makes sense that Frankenstein reflects changes within its own creator”
—Genevieve Valentine, NPR



Mary Shelley (Author)
Mary Shelley (1797-1851), the daughter of pioneering thinkers Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin, eloped with the poet Percy Shelley at the age of sixteen. Three years later, during a wet summer on Lake Geneva, Shelley famously wrote her masterpiece, Frankenstein . The years of her marriage were blighted by the deaths of three of her four children, and further tragedy followed in 1822, when Percy Shelley drowned in Italy. Following his death, Mary Shelley returned to England and continued to travel and write until her own death at the age of fifty-three.

Charlotte Gordon (Introducer)
Charlotte Gordon is a prize-winning poet and biographer. She received her undergraduate degree in English and American Literature from Harvard University and a Ph.D. from Boston University. Since 1986, she has taught creative writing, history, literature, religion, and theatre. Her poetry has won many prizes, including a Robert Penn Warren Award. Her biography of the seventeenth-century poet, Anne Bradstreet, Mistress Bradstreet: The Untold Life of America’s First Poet won a Massachusetts Book Award for non-fiction. Her latest book, Romantic Outlaws, tells of the fascinating and eerily similar lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and her daughter Mary Shelley.