Product Description

This new edition of Mary Shelley's classic novel uses the 1818 text, which is a mocking exposé of leaders and achievers who leave desolation in their wake, showing mankind its choice - to live co-operatively or to die of selfishness. It is also a black comedy, and harder and wittier than the 1831 version with which we are more familiar. Drawing on new research, Marilyn Butler examines the novel in the context of the radical sciences, which were developing among much controversy in the years following the Napoleonic Wars, and shows how Frankenstein's experiment relates to a contemporary debate between the champions of materialist science and of received religion.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #227153 in Books
• Published on: 1998-03-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 328 pages

About the Author
Marilyn Butler is King Edward VII Professor of English Literature at King's College, Cambridge. She is the author of Romantics, Rebels, and Reactionaries (1981) and co-editor of Pickering's Works of Mary Wollstonecraft (1989). She has also edited Mary Shelley's The last Man, published in World's Classics in 1994. .

Customer Reviews

"The author at once of my existence and of its unspeakable torments"
This is a review of the Oxford World's Classics edition, edited and introduced by Marilyn Butler of Exeter College, Oxford. She explains in her note on the text why the 1818 version is preferred - "it delivers an original, specific and profound fable about the modern world in conditions of social change" - rather than the usual published text of the amended 1831 edition. I agree that the original edition has a raw edge, a directness, and a refusal to concede to societal norms that is not so prominent in the later massaged text.

I came to the novel with an open mind, but with an appreciation that Hollywood had cemented the story as a classic of gothic horror. And yet the monsters tale of his `adventures' with the de Lacey family, for example, seemed worlds away from the `traditional' tale as told by American cinema. (Hence, presumably, Kenneth Branagh's 1994 adaptation bearing the conscious title "Mary Shelley's Frankenstein".)

The novel is very well-written and conceived. It is interesting for its literary-historical and scientific context, but of far more interest to me are the philosophical issues that it (unconsciously?) raises. It is geographically incoherent in places, as is the plot, but plot is not really the reason for this novel, is it?

The actual physical creation of the monster is, surprisingly, sparsely described, covering barely two paragraphs, and even then only a vague illustration is given. Throughout the novel, there are only indistinct allusions to his form. Captain Walton, for example, merely says that he was "gigantic in stature, yet uncouth and distorted in his proportions. ... his face was concealed by long locks of ragged hair; but one vast hand was extended, in colour and apparent texture like that of a mummy".

Frankenstein's rejection of his creation so soon after having given life to it - indeed, at the very point of giving life to it - after so determined and intense a devotion to the cause, seems to me to mirror the immense shame and repugnance that civilisation can inculcate at the moment of sexual orgasm in `inappropriate circumstances'. Or, given the gender of the book's author, perhaps a more relevant analogy would be giving birth to a child conceived in shameful circumstances. His rejection of his act is absolute and unyielding. He does not return to his studies to rectify his mistakes in the creation of another, or seek to modify the result that he has created. Instead, he turns his back and falls into a great depression.

Meanwhile the monster plays the part of an extraterrestrial. Initially completely alien to his surroundings, Mary Shelley uses this position to allow him to comment as an outsider on the nature of humanity. The monster says how the de Lacey cottage was "the school in which I studied human nature." Thus, he who was the experiment has now become the experimenter. "Perhaps [he remarks], if my first introduction to humanity had been made by a young soldier, burning for glory and slaughter, I should have been imbued with different sensations", than those provided by the de Laceys and their humanistic literature.

On one level the story is akin to `Beauty and the Beast', `Cyrano de Bergerac', the `Elephant Man', or `E.T.'. But why did not Frankenstein simply learn to accept his creation? He is the creator, he is the monster's god. Is this a metaphor on man's place in God's creation? (At one point, he compares his situation explicitly with Adam.) Is this a comment on the Christian religion, when the monster describes Frankenstein as "the author at once of my existence and of its unspeakable torments" in a time of upheaval and speculation in post-Enlightenment but pre-Darwinian educated circles, when deism was becoming a reputable opinion? The monster again: "The fallen angel becomes a malignant devil."

Marilyn Butler's 42-page introduction, is of the usual high standard that one comes to expect from this publisher. She details Mary Shelley's beginnings, her family and her relationship with her husband. She goes on to describe their relationship with the radical science of the period in which they lived. She explains the ghost-story competition context from which the novel arose. There then follows a critique of the novel itself.
There are three appendices to this Oxford World's Classics edition. The first is Mary Shelley's preface to the amended 1831 edition, where she gives details about the inspiration for the tale and the story behind its creation. The second details the changes made to the text, or rather denotes the additions thereto but not (for some reason) the omissions. ... lists these changes and the reasons for them. The third and final appendix is an extract from an 1820 edition of the Quarterly Review, a nineteenth-century Tory version of the London Review of Books. The extract is not a review of Mary Shelley's `Frankenstein', but is principally concerned with the lectures of William Lawrence FRS and whether the life-force and greater mental capacities of humans (compared to other animals) is inherited or `super-added'. It is these extras - and the use of the 1818 text - that make this edition superior to others.

As with all reprints of classic works of literature, I recommend that the so-called introduction (which is really more of a commentary) is best read after the novel.

Focus on Emotional Tragedy and The Personal Responsibility of The Scientist
This book is a "must read" for all science fiction / horror lovers, as you will be able to, as previously pointed out by other reviewers, trace the roots and themes of the genre back to its beginnings.

The depth of the book, however, lies in the poignant questions Shelley raises about scientific discovery and creation. These issues are as valid today as they were at the time and have been literary motifs ever since. Shelley's discussion of these themes makes this book a classic, and as such it should be understood.

If you are only familiar with Frankenstein's monster through film adaptations, you will discover an entirely different story, depicting the monster as a tragic and unloved hero, who turns into a brute following the betrayal by his creator, Victor Frankienstein.

Shelley's story centres around the emotional tragedy endured by the monster rather than on the depiction of his crimes or his outward appearance. In this context, we have to mention that the reader does not even find out how Frankenstein assembled his monster or how he infused him with life. This aspect of the story is entirely left to the reader's imagination.

Dead good, no pun intended...
Having not read the 1831 text yet, I can't compare this with the later edition, but let's see anyway...
The story itself is a very good one, the writing style is interesting - the three different narrators are worked very cleverly into each other - and when I think that Shelley was about my age when she was writing this book, it's even scarier... but anyway, on to comments about this actual edition.

It was written as part of a ghost-story contest with Lord Byron and Percy Shelley and blah blah blah... it's easy enough to find out this stuff anywhere, the introduction to this edition (Oxford Paperbacks) lays it all out nicely and then goes on to give a quick summary of the different ways the story has been interpreted, reasons for this and a fairly balanced opinion of what Marilyn Butler thinks is the best reading. Notes are only given when they're actually needed, rather than in some of the Oxford editions of other books, in which the editors decide to make notes explaining every other word - Butler steers away from explaining to us what Lake Geneva and Mont Blanc are, which is not something certain others would be so comfortable with, and therefore a reading of the text (if you're planning to refer to all the notes as you go along, which I do tend to if only to avoid irritation at wondering what the last asterisk could have been for) isn't broken up too much at all, unlike in some other books in the series (Dracula, for instance).
It would be nice for Oxford to make slightly larger editions and put all the notes on the same page as the text, since flicking back and forth to read the notes and text can get a bit trying at times. Whether this would up the costs a bit too much I don't know, but it would make the physical act of reading a little easier.
Other than that, a very good (and cheap) edition of a very good text. Five stars to me should go to a nice edition of an amazing book, and this loses out because it's not really a "nice" edition - there's a reason it's so cheap, but it's mainly to do with size and the paperback binding, not to do with the quality of product in terms of the original text or the editor's contribution.
Very good indeed.