Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797 – 1851) was an English
novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and
travel writer, best known for her Gothic novel Frankenstein: or,
The Modern Prometheus (1818). She also edited the works of her
husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley.
Her father was the political philosopher William Godwin, and her
mother was the philosopher and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft. In
1816, the couple famously spent a summer with Lord Byron, John
William Polidori, and Claire Clairmont near Geneva, Switzerland,
where Mary conceived the idea for her novel Frankenstein. Her
novels include Valperga (1823), Perkin Warbeck (1830), The Last Man
(1826), Lodore (1835), and Falkner (1837).
Francine Prose is the author of twenty works of fiction. Her
novel A Changed Man won the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and Blue
Angel was a finalist for the National Book Award. Her most recent
works of nonfiction include the highly acclaimed Anne Frank: The
Book, The Life, The Afterlife, and the New York Times bestseller
Reading Like a Writer. The recipient of numerous grants and honors,
including a Guggenheim and a Fulbright, a Director's Fellow at the
Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the
New York Public Library, Prose is a former president of PEN
American Center, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and
Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Her most
recent book is Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932. She lives
in New York City.
“Stunning original artwork by acclaimed Mexican artist Eko . .
. In her insightful introduction, Prose paves the way into the
depths of Mary Shelley’s original horror story, by recreating the
journey which led to the birth of one of history’s greatest
monsters . . . The new anniversary edition of Frankenstein is
a beautiful example of remaking a novel for the 21st century. While
remaining true to the spirit of Frankenstein, this new edition
strives to introduce the novel to a general audience, with an
intriguing new introduction, and stunning artworks that look as
though they may have been torn from the dormitory walls of the true
Victor Frankenstein.”
—Jade Fell, Engineering & Technology Magazine
“Restless Books has just released a new edition of the original
1818 version of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. The 1818 version is,
to my mind, far superior to the 1831 revision—which omits the
Paradise Lost epigraph and many of the other details . . . The
Restless edition includes an introduction by Francine Prose and is
accompanied by several videos (available online) by University of
Pennsylvania Professor of English Wendy Steiner . . . the
videos should prove to be useful teaching tools. The book is also
outfitted with study questions, supplied by Steiner, and several
illustrations by Mexican artist Eko. Eko’s approach here is
intriguing. The illustrations are superposed on reproductions of
pages from the 1820 Treatise on Descriptive Anatomy by Hippolyte
Cloquet. Moreover, nearly every illustration shows a woman or a
scientist (or in a couple of cases what may be the creature with
its long black hair) working with the outsized parts of human
anatomy. In this way, the illustrations examine in a methodical,
protracted manner the very thing that the novel itself rushes
through in the matter of mere paragraphs: the actual work in the
laboratory. Thus every illustration comes in the form of a
palimpsest—the artwork “writes over” the scientific prose,
obviating it from view but using it as a platform to explore what
Mary Shelley leaves unexplained and perhaps what she felt was
impossible adequately to imagine.”
—Chadwick Jenkins, PopMatters
“Two-hundred-years after that rained-out vacation, the work is
often celebrated as the first science-fiction novel . . . ‘I
think that people are always going to have a certain amount of
anxiety, and some of it is very well founded, about scientific
process,’ says writer and Bard College literature professor
Francine Prose, who wrote the introduction for a newly illustrated
anniversary edition of the classic from Restless Books. ‘There are
many aspects of science that still make us nervous, and with good
reason.’”
—Ryan Porter, Toronto Star
“The author seems to disclose uncommon powers of poetic
imagination.”
—Sir Walter Scott
“The relevance, aesthetic and moral, of Mary Shelley's novel only
augments as we enter more deeply into an era that already has
brought us "virtual reality" and seems likely to confront us with
cyborgs . . . Frankenstein contains one of the most vivid
versions . . . of the Romantic mythology of the
self.”
—Harold Bloom
“Mary Shelley, in the midst of the idealists, gives the dark side
to the ideal being, showing us Frankenstein’s monster.”
—D. H. Lawrence
“How did it happen that this modest gothic tale . . . became
caught in a kind of cultural echo chamber, amplifying through the
years until, a hundred and sixty-four years later, we have a cereal
called Frankenberry . . . an old TV series called The
Munsters . . . Aurora Frankenstein model kits . . . and
a saying such as ‘He looked like Frankenstein’ as a kind of
apotheosis of ugly?”
—Stephen King
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