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Product Description
Book Description
This "Norton Critical Edition" of "Frankenstein" contains the 1818 first edition text. Only the obvious typographical errors have been corrected. The book also includes writings by Mary Shelley, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron and John William Polidori, enabling the reader to place the novel in its historical context. Six 19th-century responses to the novel illustrate contemporary reactions, whilst 12 modern critical essays cover the different aspects (psychoanalytic, mythic, feminist) of the work.
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
misunderstood monstrosity,
By I ain't no porn writer (author, "Crippled Dreams") - See all my reviews
This review is from: Frankenstein (Paperback)
Mary Shelley, her husband the poet Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, and his physician Doctor Polidori were staying at Byron's country villa. It was a stormy night of orgies, opium, and ghost stories. The men also liked to discuss the theory of galvanism--scientifically bringing a dead body back to life. It was this that gave Mary Shelley the central idea for her main character, a creature created and brought to life by a mad science. And it was out of these nightmare-inducing, drug-induced, spine-chilling elements that Mary Shelley was struck with the idea to write her masterpiece about Frankenstein, a misunderstood and persecuted but otherwise good and gentle "noble savage" and freak creation of science. This book will teach you a thing or two about how people treat the outsider, and about how it's important to judge people from the inside, not the outside.David Rehak
5.0 out of 5 stars
Very thorough look at Mary Shelley's original work.,
By
This review is from: Frankenstein (Paperback)
This Norton Critical Edition makes an excellent value in literature. If you are a student of literature, this volume will help you gain a thorough knowledge of Mary Shelley's original text (lots of context and critical essays included), as well as editions that followed. It contains her original preface (supposedly much influenced by Percy) as well as her 1830 preface. If you do not know, Mary's monster is not the monster one finds in the movies, nor is Dr. Frankenstein. Further, if you have not read an edition other than the first, you don't know about the incest issue that is in the first edition, but not later editions. As you will find in reviews below, this is not a flawless novel, but it is a must read for any well-read person. What is rarely discussed is the influence of John Locke, whose Essay Concerning Human Understanding Mary Shelley read closely just prior to writing the novel. The influence of his work on hers is substantial. Read in the light of Romanticism's reaction to the Enlightenment and Locke et al gives one a completely different perspective for understanding the work. I think you'll find Mary's philosophy appropriately and interestingly feminine, without being feminist; another surprise, considering her lineage. Definitely a good read!
3.0 out of 5 stars
"Cursed, cursed creator.",
By
This review is from: Frankenstein (Paperback)
Victor grew up reading the works of Paracelsus, Agrippa, and Albertus Magnus, the alchemists of the time. Toss in a little natural philosophy (sciences) and you have the making of a monster. Or at least a being that after being spurned for looking ugly becomes ugly. So for revenge the creature decides unless Victor makes another (female this time) creature, that Victor will also suffer the loss of friends and relatives. What is victor to do? Bow to the wishes and needs of his creation? Or challenge it to the death? What would you do?Although the concept of the monster is good, and the conflicts of the story well thought out, Shelly suffers from the writing style of the time. Many people do not finish the book as the language is stilted and verbose for example when was the last time you said, "Little did I then expect the calamity that was in a few moments to overwhelm me and extinguish in horror and despair all fear of ignominy of death." Much of the book seems like travel log filler. More time describing the surroundings of Europe than the reason for traveling or just traveling. Many writers use traveling to reflect time passing or the character growing in stature or knowledge. In this story they just travel a lot. This book is definitely worth plodding through for moviegoers. The record needs to be set strait. First shock is that the creator is named Victor Frankenstein; the creature is just "monster" not Frankenstein. And it is Victor that is backwards which added in him doing the impossible by not knowing any better. The monster is well read in "Sorrows of a Young Werther," "Paradise Lost," and Plutarch's "Lives." The debate (mixed with a few murders) rages on as to whether the monster was doing evil because of his nature or because he was spurned?
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