Book description
What you create can destroy you.
One freezing morning, a lone man wandering across the Artic ice caps
is rescued from starvation by a ship's captain. Victor Frankenstein's
story is one of ambition, murder and revenge. As a young scientist he
pushed moral boundaries in order to cross the final frontier and
create life. But his creation is a monster stitched together from
grave-robbed body parts who has no place in the world, and his life
can only lead to tragedy.
Written when she was only nineteen, Shelley's gothic tale is one of
the greatest horror stories ever published.
Mary Shelley was born in London on 17 August 1797. Her mother, the
celebrated feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft, died a few days after
her birth. Her father, William Godwin, a well-known anarchist and
atheist writer, tutored Mary. In 1814, when she was sixteen, she fell in
love with the married poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and they eloped to
France. In 1816 the couple travelled to Lake Geneva to spend the summer
with the poet Byron. Mary was inspired to write
Frankenstein
after Byron arranged a ghost story competition during their stay. In
the autumn of 1816 Shelley's pregnant wife drowned herself in the
Serpentine in Hyde Park and Shelley immediately married Mary. The couple
had four children together but only one son survived infancy. They lived
in Italy until Percy's death in a boating accident in 1822. Mary
continued to write until her death in London on 1 February 1851. She is
buried in Bournemouth.
