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  • Published: 30 May 2019
  • ISBN: 9781473569287
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 256

Frankenstein

Or The Modern Prometheus




'It was already one in the morning; the rain pattered dismally against the panes, and my candle was nearly burnt out, when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open . . .' Frankenstein


A beautiful new edition of Mary Shelley's Gothic horror classic, Frankenstein

INCLUDES A CULTURAL HISTORY OF FRANKENSTEIN’S MONSTER BY JEANETTE WINTERSON

Navigating the Arctic, the captain of a ship rescues a man wandering near death across the ice caps. How the man got there reveals itself a story of ambition, murder and revenge. As a young scientist, Victor Frankenstein pushed moral boundaries in order to cross the final frontier and create life. But his creation is a monster stitched together from grave-plundered body parts who has no place in the world, and his existence can only lead to tragedy.

**One of the BBC’s 100 Novels That Shaped Our World**

  • Published: 30 May 2019
  • ISBN: 9781473569287
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 256

Other books in the series

Russian Thinkers
The New Penguin Book Of American Short Stories, From Washington Irving To Lydia Davis
When You Are Old
The Black Tulip
The Lady of the Camellias
The Good Soldier
Selected Poetry
Venus in Furs
Man and Superman
Military Dispatches
The Prelude

About the author

Mary Shelley

Mary Shelley was born in London in 1797, the daughter of two of the era’s most radical writers: William Godwin, the anarchist utopian, and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, who died from the childbirth. After a difficult childhood under a demanding stepmother, she ran off to the Continent at age 17 with her father’s wealthy—and married—benefactor, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, although they did not get married until the suicide of Shelley’s wife two years later. Despite close intellectual bonds the marriage was unhappy, due to Percy Shelley’s regular campaigning for open “utopian” sexual relationships (with her sister, for one), and the deaths of three out of their four children. In 1817, while visiting Lord Byron at Lake Geneva, the three challenged one another to write a horror story. The result from Mary was the novel Frankenstein, an instant popular (although not critical) success. Four years later her peripatetic husband drowned in a boating accident. Mary Shelley never remarried, but she continued on as a successful writer until her death in London in 1851.

Also by Mary Shelley

See all

Praise for Frankenstein

More relevant today than ever

Benjamin Zephaniah

A haunting, melancholy work of gothic beauty

Independent

The most famous of all horror stories still packs a punch

Daily Mail

Frankenstein launched an entire genre of dystopian fiction, and a legacy of horror at the consequences of unbridled experimentation

Daily Telegraph

Shelley’s speechifying, lonely, Miltonic monster remains one of the greatest characters in all of literature… The book may also be the greatest meditation on birth I have ever read

Siri Hustvedt, The Week

A masterpiece

Philip Pullman

Frankenstein launched an entire genre of dystopian fiction, and a legacy of horror at the consequences of unbridled experimentation

Daily Telegraph

A haunting, melancholy work of gothic beauty

Independent

A masterpiece

Phillip Pullman

Shelley’s speechifying, lonely, Miltonic monster remains one of the greatest characters in all of literature… The book may also be the greatest meditation on birth I have ever read.

Siri Hustvedt, The Week

The most famous of all horror stories still packs a punch

Daily Mail