Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus (the 1818 Text)

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

ISBN 10: 1492878413 / ISBN 13: 9781492878414

Published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform, 2013

Seller Inventory # LU-9781492878414

Synopsis:

"As the night advanced, a fierce wind arose from the woods, and quickly dispersed the clouds that had loitered in the heavens: the blast tore along like a mighty avelanche, and produced a kind of insanity in my spirits, that burst all bounds of reason and reflection. I lighted the dry branch of a tree, and danced with fury around the devoted cottage, my eyes still fixed on the western horizon, the edge of which the moon nearly touched. A part of its orb was at length hid, and I waved my brand; it sunk, and, with a loud scream, I fired the straw, and heath, and bushes, which I had collected. The wind fanned the fire, and the cottage was quickly enveloped by the flames, which clung to it, and licked it with their forked and destroying tongues." ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The mutated hybrid of Enlightenment optimism and Gothic cynicism - of humanism and environmentalism - Frankenstein offers a chilling postmortem of humanity's confident drive to master and operate the cosmos' generative and degenerative functions. The disastrous fable of man's bastardization of nature is as much a tragedy of the neglected offspring of human ingenuity and cosmic nature as it is an elegy of the hopes for mankind's progress in the gory wake of the French Revolution.

Review: Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is one of the masterpieces of nineteenth-century Gothicism. While stay-ing in the Swiss Alps in 1816 with her lover Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, and others, Mary, then eighteen, began to concoct the story of Dr. Victor Frankenstein and the monster he brings to life by electricity. Written in a time of great personal tragedy, it is a subversive and morbid story warning against the dehumanization of art and the corrupting influence of science. Packed with allusions and literary references, it is also one of the best thrillers ever written. Frankenstein; Or, the Modern Prometheus was an instant bestseller on publication in 1818. The prototype of the science fiction novel, it has spawned countless imitations and adaptations but retains its original power.
This Modern Library edition includes a new Introduction by Wendy Steiner, the chair of the English department at the University of Pennsylvania and author of The Scandal of Pleasure.
Mary Shelley was born Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin in 1797 in London. She eloped to France with Shelley, whom she married in 1816. After Frankenstein, she wrote several novels, including Valperga and Falkner, and edited editions of the poetry of Shelley, who had died in 1822. Mary Shelley died in London in 1851.

Bibliographic Details

Title: Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus (the...
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
Publication Date: 2013
Binding: Paperback
Condition: New