About this title: Written in 1816 when she was only 19, for a horror-writing contest suggested by Byron, Mary Shelley's novel of "the modern Prometheus" chillingly dramatized the dangerous potential of life created in the laboratory. A frightening creation myth for our own time, "Frankenstein" remains one of the greatest horror stories ever written, and an undisputed classic.
Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Everyman's Library, London
Date Published: 1992
ISBN-13:9781857150629ISBN:1857150627
Description: Like New, Unread, not previously owned. May show signs of wear including remainder marks or stickers on book or cover. In like new dust jacket. xxix, 231p.; 21 cm. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Everyman's Library, London
Date Published: 1992
ISBN-13:9781857150629ISBN:1857150627
Description: Like New, Unread, not previously owned. May show signs of wear including remainder marks or stickers on book or cover. In like new dust jacket. xxix, 231p.; 21 cm. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Courage Books; Imprint of Running Press
Date Published: 1990-09
ISBN-13:9780894718823ISBN:0894718827
Description: Very Good in very good jacket. Hardcover with dust jacket. Both near fine. Very slight general wear. Clean, tight, straight, unmarked. Sticker / sticker residue. read more
Description: Very good. No dust jacket as issued. Very light edge and corner wear. Very light corner crease on cover. No marks. Tight, square book. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 261 p. Contains: Illustrations. Audience: General/trade. read more
Description: Good. Spine is smooth. Covers show some wear at the edges and corners. Good reading copy. Binding is Mass Market Paperback. Pages tanning. Used books may have price stickers. Most orders ship on the next business day. read more
Description: Good. Spine is well creased. Covers show wear at the edges and corners. Good Grade C average reading copy. Binding is Mass Market Paperback. Pages tanning. Used books may have price stickers. Most orders ship on the next business day. read more
Description: Good. Spine is smooth. Covers show some wear at the edges and corners. Good reading copy. Binding is Mass Market Paperback. Pages tanning. Used books may have price stickers. Most orders ship on the next business day. read more
"Mary Shelley wrote this novel while on vacation with two poets - Percy Shelley and Lord Byron. Bored and stuck indoors during a week of rainy days, they entertained each other by making up ghost stories. Mary Shelley fleshed hers out into Frankenstein.
The monster in the book is nothing like the monster in the movie.
We're used to this incredibly hulking zombie with a screw stuck in his neck. Instead what we get here is an educated, emotional human being who relishes Paradise Lost, Plutarch's Lives, and Goethe.
I had the feeling Mary Shelley had given much thought to big eternal questions about God, creation, the nature of being human, and the like. Paradise Lost becomes the perfect allusion for her to use in that Victor Frankenstein like Milton's God -- responsible for a creation that goes haywire. She identifies her monster with Milton's Satan.
There are two major problems with the novel. First, the flowery early 19th Century is impossibly klutzy and tedious. "Hail vile insect! Tyrant and tormentor! - Curse the sun that gazes on your misery." Stuff like that.
Second, the main character, Victor Frankenstein, is a vile insect who spends the entire book abetting a serial murderer.
In spite of these problems, it's a great book deserving of its status as a classic.
The entire time I was reading it I couldn't help but think that here is Percy Shelley writing rapturously about the wild west wind, and Lord Byron scribbling down Childe Harold. Meanwhile, sweet 19-year-old Mary is writing this horror/monster book. I got a big kick out of picturing that."
"Trailer: "I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs" "...but now that I had finished, the beauty of dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart." Victor Frankenstein, the scientist, tries to make a creature, but a creature turns out to be a hideous-looking monster. He runs away, but he never knows what this monster will bring to his family.
My thought: Great book. There are some hard vocabularies, but this book is interesting. How narrator changes in order to show what Frankenstein, monster, and other people think.
About the Author: Mary Shelley was born in London. She is famous for 'Frankenstein.' She was one of the feminists, the author of 'A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.' She was a British novelist, short story writer, essayist, biographer, and travel writer."
"Most of the people just do not get Frankenstein. It is more along the lines of an epic Romantic poem in a novel's form. The fact that the monster was abandoned by his creator is a direct symbol of the abandonment of men; be it some form of intelligent designer or the process of our own evolution. Either way, man has been abandoned in some fashion by some device. This is where I believe the work coincides with the Romantic period. The monster's request of Frankenstein to create him a mate is a Romantic notion by itself, not speaking of felicity, but of the need for companionship and understanding from a similar being. To know that he is not alone is to feel like he belongs somewhere in this world. The Romantic period is really the first period of writing where the "I" came up as an acceptable topic for writing. How could the Monster's request for sympathy be more fitting? For the Romantic writers, their writing was about them and their world, not the world itself. It was about them and their personal relationship with nature and their god. I believe that these points are the driving force of our ability to relate to Frankenstein the novel today."
"I had been told, years ago, that the book is very different from the movie. That statement applies to most book to movie translations. I only remember ever seeing 2 scenes from an old black and white version of Frankenstein: the iconic "It's alive!" scene and the scene where the monster meets and plays with a young girl tossing flowers into the water. Other than that my only other experiences with Frankenstein are with the likes of Mel Brooks, Abbott and Costello and Sting (The Bride). Okay, so, I had no preconceptions about the story.
After finishing the book, I still don't know or understand who Walton is other than a willing, impressionable and naive audience for Frankenstein's narrative. It did illustrate to me how unreliable Victor Frankenstein is as a narrator. My first thought after the monster was created and Victor returns to an empty lab after fleeing from his creation is "how did the monster get out without anyone seeing him". (I may have also seen one too many episodes of CSI, but I also though why didn't anyone smell him.) As the narrative continued whenever Victor claimed to have seen the monster I was reminded of Ed Harris's charachter in the movie "A Beautiful Mind". The more I read the more I was certian that the monster was a figment of Victor's imagination. He began to demonstrate a talent for rationalization. In his madness he questions what it would have been like for humans to have no other ambitions other then to satisfy their hunger, thirst and desire (to reproduce). He then meets up with his "wretched" creation who proceeds to demonstrate, by recounting his life over the past months, what would happen if one had no other wants then thirst, hunger and desire. That made it clear to me that Victor was a clear and quite good example of a person with Dissociative Personality Disorder. Every incendent after that point further reinforced my observation. Even Walton's claim to have spoke to the monster at the end of the book can be explained as a dream or the beginings of his decent into maddness after having been ice bound for months, failing in his endevours and listening to Victor's story.
Instead of a horror story that the monster movies of hollywood have made "Frankenstein" out to be I have found it to be an vivid demonstration of severe mental illness. How Mary Shelly was able to do this at such a young age is very impressive."
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