One of the BBC's '100 Novels That Shaped Our World'

The Penguin English Library Edition of Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

'Never did I behold a vision so horrible as his face, of such loathsome, yet appalling hideousness'

A twisted, upside-down creation myth, Mary Shelley's chilling Gothic tale lays bare the dark side of science, and the horror within us all. It tells the story of Victor Frankenstein, who plunders graveyards to create a new being from the bodies of the dead - but whose botched creature causes nothing but murder and destruction. Written after a nightmare when its author was only eighteen, Frankenstein gave birth to the modern science fiction novel.

The Penguin English Library - 100 editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the beginning of the First World War.

About the 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.

Review

"A subtle and ironic prophecy that raises the question of who exactly is the real monster in this story." -- "Jesse Larsen, 500 Great Books by Women"

A vibrant rendition of a tragic story. -- "AudioFile"

It is a mistake to read Frankenstein as a modern novel of psychological realism...Where Dracula and other conventional Gothic works are fantasies, with clear links to fairly tales and legends, and even popular ballads, Frankenstein has the theoretical and cautionary tone of science fiction. -- "Joyce Carol Oates"

The quest of a solitary and ravaged consciousness first for consolation, then for revenge, and finally for a self-destruction that will be apocalyptic, that will bring down the creator with his creature. -- "Harold Bloom