FRANKENSTEIN
MARY SHELLEY was born in London in 1797, daughter of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, famous radical writers of the day. Mary’s mother died tragically eleven days after the birth. Under Godwin’s conscientious and expert tuition, Mary’s was an intellectually stimulating childhood though she was emotionally undernourished. In 1814 she met and soon fell in love with the then unknown Percy Bysshe Shelley, and in July they eloped to the Continent. In December 1816, after Shelley’s first wife, Harriet, committed suicide, Mary and Percy married. Of the four children she bore Shelley, only Percy Florence survived. They lived in Italy from 1818 until 1823, when Percy Shelly drowned, following the capsize of his boat Ariel in a storm. Mary returned with Percy Florence to London, where she continued to live as a professional writer until her death in 1851.
The idea for Frankenstein came to Mary during a summer sojourn in 1816 with Percy Shelley on the shores of Lake Geneva, where Lord Byron was also staying. She was stimulated to begin her unique tale after Byron suggested a ghost story competition. Byron himself produced “A Fragment,” which later inspired his physician, John Polidori, to write “The Vampyre: A Tale.” Mary completed her short story back in England and it was published as Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus in 1818. Among her other novels are The Last Man, a dystopic story set in the twenty-first century (1826), The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck (1830), Lodore (1835), and Falkner (1837). As well as contributing many stories and essays to publications such as the Keepsake and the Westminster Review, she contributed numerous biographical essays for Lardner’s Cabinet Cyclopaedia (1835, 1838–39). Her other books include the first collected edition of P. B. Shelley’s Poetical Works (4 vols., 1839) and a book based on the Continental travels she undertook with her son Percy Florence and his friends, Rambles in Germany and Italy (1844). Mary Shelley died in London on February 1, 1851.
ELIZABETH KOSTOVA is the author of the bestselling novel The Historian. She graduated from Yale and holds an MFA from the University of Michigan.
CHARLES E. ROBINSON, a professor of English at the University of Delaware, has frequently lectured on “The Ten Texts of Frankenstein” and has recently edited Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus: The Original Two-Volume Novel of 1816–1817 from the Bodleian Library Manuscripts, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (with Percy Bysshe Shelley) (2008) for the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford, reprinted in paperback Vintage Books (2009). His other books include Shelley and Byron: The Snake and Eagle Wreathed in Fight (1976) and an edition of Mary Shelley: Collected Tales and Short Stories, with Original Engravings (1976), published by Johns Hopkins; The Mary Shelley Reader (1990), coedited with Betty T. Bennett for Oxford University Press; and an edition of Mary Shelley’s Mythological Dramas: Proserpine and Midas (1992) as well as the two-volume Frankenstein Notebooks (1996), both published by Garland.
GUILLERMO DEL TORO is a Mexican director, producer, screenwriter, novelist, and designer. He cofounded the Guadalajara International Film Festival, and formed his own production company, the Tequila Gang. However, he is most recognized for his Academy Award–winning film, Pan’s Labyrinth, and the Hellboy film franchise. He has received Nebula and Hugo awards, was nominated for a Bram Stoker Award, and is an avid collector and student of arcane memorabilia and weird fiction.