Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus

Collection Record · The Archive

Physical Description

Three-volume set in duodecimo hardcover, boards covered in contemporary cloth binding. Spine letters stamped in gilt. Sheets measure 171 × 102 millimetres. The first edition consists of approximately 502 pages across the three volumes, printed on cream wove paper. The title page of each volume carries the full title: Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. The volumes are designated Vol. I, Vol. II, and Vol. III. The first volume shows light foxing at the margins and the cloth exhibits minor wear consistent with age. The spines retain their gilt lettering. Binding is tight across all three volumes.

Edition Record

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. London: Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor & Jones, 1818. First edition. Three volumes, duodecimo. 502 pages total. Published anonymously. Preface by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Dedicated to William Godwin.

Provenance and Condition

Recovered from a private library, Oxford. The set arrived with all three volumes present, the cloth bindings intact and boards square. Pages are clean with minor age-toning consistent with the period and paper stock. Previous ownership marks have been noted on the free endpapers of the first volume but not removed. Foxing is light and confined to the margins. The gilt spine lettering remains legible on all three volumes. The set is shelved in the general collection, row 8, position 12. Condition assessment: good. Conservative binding repair may be recommended in twelve months. Next full review scheduled in eighteen months.

Publication Context

Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor & Jones was a London-based publisher operating from premises at Finsbury Square. The press was active in publishing general and literary works during the early nineteenth century. The 1818 first edition consisted of approximately 500 copies issued anonymously, a standard practice for the period. The title page credited only "the Author of the Following Work," while the dedication to William Godwin and the preface by Percy Bysshe Shelley afforded contemporary readers limited attribution information.

A second English edition in three volumes was published in 1823 following the success of a dramatic adaptation, Presumption; or, the Fate of Frankenstein by Richard Brinsley Peake. This 1823 edition explicitly credited Mary Shelley as author on the title page. Subsequent nineteenth-century editions established the work in multiple printings and translations across European markets.

Composition

Frankenstein is a complete novel written specifically for book publication, not a fix-up of serialised components. The work was conceived and completed during 1816–1817. The author began the project in summer 1816 near Geneva, Switzerland, at the residence of Lord Byron, where she was staying with her companion and future husband Percy Bysshe Shelley and others of Byron's circle. The novel was completed in draft form by May 1817 and subsequently prepared for publication.

Composition Notes

The novel emerged from a competition among Byron, Shelley, John Polidori, and Mary Shelley to write a ghost story. After days of deliberation, Shelley conceived the narrative structure and the figure of Victor Frankenstein. The work draws on contemporary scientific discourse — particularly discussions of galvanism and electricity — which formed part of the intellectual atmosphere at Geneva in 1816. The completed manuscript was substantially Mary Shelley's independent composition, though Percy Shelley offered editorial suggestions during the revision process.

The novel exists in two distinct textual versions. The 1818 first edition is substantially different from the 1831 revised edition, which incorporated authorial revisions and was published thirteen years later. The Archive holds the 1818 first edition, representing the earliest authorized English publication.

Narrative Framework

The novel employs a complex frame narrative structure consisting of three nested narrative voices, each separated by layers of mediation. The outermost frame consists of four letters written by Robert Walton, an Arctic explorer, to his sister Margaret Saville. Within these letters, Walton transcribes the narrative of Victor Frankenstein, the protagonist. Within Victor's narrative account, a third voice emerges: the Creature's own retrospective account of its experience and perspective. This tripartite structure creates a progression from external observation (Walton's letters) through personal testimony (Frankenstein's confession) to subjective interiority (the Creature's narrative).

The narrative begins in the Arctic. Walton's ship is trapped in ice; his crew sights a figure pursuing another across the frozen landscape. Walton rescues the pursued figure, who identifies himself as Victor Frankenstein. Frankenstein, near death, agrees to relate his history to Walton. Frankenstein's extensive account details his upbringing, his scientific ambitions, his secret construction of a living being from assembled components, his abandonment of his creation, and the chain of tragic consequences that follows. At the climactic moment of Frankenstein's narrative, the Creature itself appears aboard the ship and recounts, in its own voice, the events of its own development and its suffering at the hands of society and its creator.

The framing device operates on multiple structural levels. Walton's interpretation of events precedes Frankenstein's first-person account; Frankenstein's judgment of the Creature precedes the Creature's own testimony. Each successive frame offers recontextualisation and reinterpretation of prior events. The novel concludes with Walton's final letters describing the departure of the Creature from the ship and Frankenstein's final moments, reasserting the external frame's authority as the final mediating voice.

Narrative Chronology

Volume I. Robert Walton's initial letters establish his ambitions and his Arctic setting. His ship encounters Frankenstein. Frankenstein begins his narrative with his childhood and family background. He recounts his early education, his passion for natural philosophy, and his departure from home to study at Ingolstadt University. At university, under the influence of professors Waldman and Krempe, Frankenstein becomes obsessed with the processes of life and the possibility of creating life through scientific means.

Volume II. Frankenstein details his secret project to assemble and animate a living being. He describes the physical construction of the creature over two years in a secluded laboratory, his horror at the being's awakening, and his immediate abandonment of the creation. The creature, confused and abandoned, withdraws into wilderness. Frankenstein returns home but soon receives devastating news: his beloved friend Henry Clerval has been found dead. Frankenstein falls into fever and illness. Upon his recovery, he learns that his cousin and promised bride, Elizabeth Lavenza, awaits his return.

Frankenstein's happiness is interrupted by his discovery that the Creature is still alive and remains present in his life. He undertakes a journey to the Arctic with the intention of confronting and destroying the Creature. It is at this point, mid-pursuit, that Walton's crew rescues him. Within Frankenstein's account, the Creature now appears and speaks, relating its own history: its awakening, its gradual discovery of language and society through observation of the De Lacey family, its growing consciousness of its own hideous appearance and consequent alienation, its appeal to Frankenstein for companionship, and the violence that follows from Frankenstein's refusal.

Volume III. The Creature's narrative concludes with its murder of Elizabeth Lavenza on Frankenstein's wedding night. Frankenstein resumes his narrative account to Walton, describing his pursuit of the Creature into the Arctic wilderness. Frankenstein dies aboard Walton's ship. The Creature, appearing in Walton's cabin after Frankenstein's death, expresses its anguish at the loss and its intention to end its own life. The novel concludes with Walton's final letters reporting the Creature's departure across the Arctic ice.

Narrative Structure Classification

The novel does not conform to conventional linear narrative architecture. It is not a hero's journey — there is no single protagonist who develops or transforms in the conventional sense. Victor Frankenstein does not triumph; the Creature does not achieve integration or resolution. Both are destroyed.

The closest structural classification is the nested epistolary frame narrative, a form in which letters serve as the outermost structural container, followed by multiple layers of recounted speech. The model has precedents in eighteenth-century epistolary fiction, but Frankenstein employs the form not for the purposes of immediacy or intimacy but for the purposes of mediation and refractive perspective — each frame introduces additional mediation and invites questioning of reliability and interpretation.

Within this frame structure, the novel operates as a philosophical dialogue. The three narrative voices represent three distinct perspectives on creation, responsibility, and existence: Walton's external rationality, Frankenstein's personal anguish and responsibility, and the Creature's subjective account of consciousness and suffering. The novel's structural argument proceeds through the juxtaposition and partial contradiction of these three accounts.

The temporal structure is non-linear. The novel begins in the Arctic (present), moves retrospectively through Frankenstein's past (constituting the bulk of the narrative), introduces the Creature's account (which overlaps chronologically with Frankenstein's narrative but from an alternative perspective), and concludes by returning to the Arctic present with Walton's final observations. This temporal layering creates a palimpsest effect in which earlier events are continually reinterpreted as new information emerges.

Characters

Settings

Thematic Classification

Primary Themes

Creation and responsibility. Victor Frankenstein's act of creation is undertaken without consideration of the consequences or the welfare of the being he brings into existence. The novel argues, through the unfolding catastrophe, that the act of creation entails moral obligation toward the created. Victor's abandonment of his creation is presented as a fundamental failure — not merely a scientific error but a moral one. The Creature's violence is represented, through its own narrative account, as the direct consequence of this abandonment.

Alienation and belonging. The Creature's narrative explores the experience of consciousness emerging into a world that rejects it. The Creature possesses rationality, linguistic capability, and capacity for moral reasoning, yet is universally rejected on grounds of appearance alone. The novel employs the Creature as a vehicle for examining the contingency of social belonging and the violence that exclusion produces. The De Lacey family episode demonstrates the Creature's capacity for affection and its devastating recognition that acceptance is impossible.

Knowledge and overreach. Victor's scientific ambition is presented as boundless and ultimately destructive. He pursues knowledge of the mechanics of life without considering the ethical dimensions of applying that knowledge. The novel critiques the instrumentalisation of knowledge and the notion that technical capability confers the right to act. Victor's scientific methods are sound; his moral reasoning is catastrophically deficient.

Isolation and communication. Multiple characters experience sustained isolation: Walton in the Arctic, Victor in his laboratory, the Creature in its consciousness of its own otherness. The novel repeatedly demonstrates the human necessity of communication and recognition. Tragic events accumulate when characters fail to communicate — Victor keeps his secret; the Creature cannot make itself understood; Walton and Frankenstein briefly connect before Frankenstein's death ends their possibility of sustained dialogue.

Nature and civilisation. The novel contrasts natural landscapes — the Arctic, Alpine wilderness, forests — with spaces of civilisation and society. Characters experience both refuge and torment in natural settings. The Creature finds a temporary sanctuary in wilderness but also experiences the most acute suffering in natural isolation. The novel does not resolve the tension between nature as refuge and nature as desolation.

Awards and Recognition

The novel was not subject to systematic prize architecture as it was published during an era when literary prizes were uncommon. Reception upon publication in 1818 was mixed. Contemporary critics recognised the originality of the conception but were divided on questions of taste and propriety. Walter Scott, writing in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, praised the work, observing that "the author seems to us to disclose uncommon powers of poetic imagination." Other critics found the narrative melodramatic or the subject matter excessive.

The success of the 1820 dramatic adaptation, Presumption; or, the Fate of Frankenstein by Richard Brinsley Peake, prompted a second and expanded edition in 1823. Subsequent nineteenth-century critical engagement established the novel as a significant work within Gothic and Romantic traditions. The novel has experienced sustained recognition as a foundational text of science fiction — a claim based primarily on its treatment of technology, scientific ambition, and unforeseen consequences. The 1818 first edition is recognised as a historically important artifact in the development of the science fiction genre and remains analytically central to considerations of Romantic-era thought regarding knowledge, creation, and moral responsibility.

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Cross-References

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