Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (an Opera Literary Classic): Original 1818 Text

“If I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear!” Over two hundred years since the words were written, the anguished cry of Victor Frankenstein’s nameless creation strikes a chord within our collective hearts and minds. In the summer months of 1816, (the author) Mary, Percy Bysshe Shelly, and sister, Claire took a trip to visit Claire’s lover, Lord Byron, in Geneva. (This was the infamous “year without a summer,” and the air remained chilled & cold.) During the visit, Byron proposed that he, Mary, Percy, and Byron’s physician, John Polidori, have a competition to write the best ghost story to pass time stuck indoors. (In some accounts, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley states that she woke up to a vision of the Creature standing at the foot of her bed, staring into her eyes.) Mary was just eighteen years old when she won the contest with her creation of Frankenstein: the tale of a man with a monstrous ego he cloaked in a belief in his own righteousness, and the poor, doomed creature he gives life to in an act of hubris that eventually destroys them both. In this volume of the classic, chilling tale you get to read the original texts in the three-volume arrangement it was originally published. Two centuries later, the tale still fascinates…pick up your copy today.