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Frankenstein^d

Letter I^d

TO Mrs. Saville, England

You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings. I arrived here yesterday, and my first task is to assure my dear sister of my welfare and increasing confidence in the success of my undertaking.

I am already far north of London^h, and as I walk...

X [d] Frankenstein

Writing & Reading

This is by way of an Introduction, some of which the annotations elaborate upon.

The reader may choose between two editions of Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, the 1818 and the 1831 (this is the 1831). Recommending the 1831 is that Mary Shelley intended it to supplant its youthful predecessor. Her husband, the poet Percy Shelley, made editorial suggestions and wrote a brief introduction to the 1818 …

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X [d] Letter 1

Writing & Reading

Frankenstein is what's known as an epistolary novel, its narration told through epistles or letters. Samuel Richardson perfected the form in his influential Pamela, Or, Virtue Rewarded (1740), Clarissa, Or, The History of a Young Lady (1748), and then, turning from a female to a male protagonist of superior virtue, Richardson wrote …

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X [h] St. Petersburgh

Places

City associated with Peter the Great, the Russian czar who admired England, considered himself an enlightened autocrat, and ruled Russia from 1682-1725.

X [d] 17—

Daily Life

Mary Shelley's omission of the decade means she can evoke a general historical landscape from the later 18^th c.. But, absent anachronism, the year must be 1799.

Walton refers to Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," published in 1798. Walton is writing either in that year or, given his travels and distance from England, in 1799, ten years after the fall of the Bastille, s…

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