Mary Shelley – Frankenstein, May 29, 2020

Frankenstein – The first edition was published anonymously in London in 1818. Shelley's name appears on the second edition published in France in 1823

Title page and frontispiece of Mary Shelley’s 1831 (third) edition of Frankenstein

It all began when four friends got together in a villa by Lake Geneva in Switzerland. On a stormy night in 1816, one of them, Lord Byron, proposed ‘We will each write a ghost story.’ The others were Percy Bysshe Shelley, the poet, his wife, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, and John Polidori, a young twenty-year-old aide to Lord Byron. 

Villa Diodati, where Percy Shelley, Mary Shelley, Lord Byron and John Polidori decided to write ghost stories in the summer of 1816

Two years later the expansion of what Mary Shelley wrote was published in London as Frankenstein; or The Modern Prometheus, the first ever novel in the Science Fiction genre. John Polidori’s submission to the same contest was published as The Vampyre, now viewed as the forerunner of the vampire genre of fantasy fiction. The two established poets fell short, their ghost story efforts dissipating amidst their other labours.

By 1851 when Mary Shelley died the approximate number copies sold of Frankenstein was 7,000: far more than all the volumes of Percy Shelley’s poetry combined.  A copy of  the novel, signed by the author, with an inscription which read “To Lord Byron, from the author” sold for £350,000 at auction in 2013. Not only is the novel Frankenstein in print 200 years later, selling ~50,000 copies annually, but Frankenstein's monster has appeared in almost 200 TV and film productions. 

The films featuring Frankenstein's monster have been instrumental in promoting the story, although most of them deviate from the novel in crucial elements. The most famous portrayal is by Boris Karloff in the 1931 film:

Boris Karloff in Jack Pierce's makeup as Frankenstein's monster

This was Joe’s introduction to Frankenstein at the tender age of six or seven when his godmother took him to see it in Madras at the Elphinstone cinema. Boris Karloff acted in two follow-on productions, Bride of Frankenstein, and Son of Frankenstein.

Gopa says this novel “is not just a horror story about a monster. It is a deeply thought out work of literature and science. The introduction, through a series of fictional correspondences and recordings like that of an ‘epistolary novel’, prepares the ground for multiple narratives. The first narrative introduces an allegorical story and the protagonists. With each narrative the story takes shape. Subsequent narratives highlight the mental and moral struggles of each of the characters and how they search for different remedies to overcome their sorrows.” Frankenstein has become one the most analysed and debated novels of all time.

As before the readers were forced to convene by videoconference using Zoom,  to protect each other from the novel coronavirus. We wish to acknowledge the cooperation of Joe’s daughter, Rachel. 

Here we are at the end of the animated 2-hour session:

Devika, Joe, KumKum, Geeta, Pamela, Arundhaty, Priya, Shoba, Kavita, Gopa, Zakia