The Novels and Selected Works of Mary Shelley Vol 1

Nora Crook, Pamela Clemit, Betty T Bennett

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9781138761803
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000748833
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Languages
• Index: Literature

These eight volumes contain the works of Mary Shelley and include introductions and prefatory notes to each volume. Included in this edition are "Frankenstein" (1818), "Matilda" ((1819), "Valperga" (1823), "The Last Man" (1826), "Perkin Warbeck" (1830) and "Lodore" (1835).

Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus

Modem Prometheus: the phrase 'Modern Prometheus's' is found in Shaftesbury, Moralists, pt I, section ii (1773), p. 205, a treatise in Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, and Times (1711) by Anthony Ashley Cooper, third Earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713), together with matter relevant to the novel (see Joseph (1969), pp. 228-9). Godwin frequently cites from and commends Characteristicks (for content, not style; see, for instance, Godwin, Enquirer, pp. 230n„ 274-5); it is very probable that Mary Shelley's knowledge of Characteristicks antedates the first (1825) record of her reading them (MWSL, I, p. 476).

Epigraph: John Milton (1608-74), Paradise Lost, X. 743-5; omitted from the editions of 1823 and 1831; read aloud by P. B. Shelley during November 1816 (MWSJ, I, p. 146).

FRANKENSTEIN; OR, THE MODERN PROMETHEUS.

IN THREE VOLUMES.

Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay To mould me man? Did I solicit thee From darkness to promote me?—

PARADISE LOST.

VOL. I.

London: PRINTED FOR LACKINGTON, HUGHES, HARDING, MAVOR, & JOΝES, FINSBURY SQUARE. 1818.

Dedication: omitted in 1823 and 1831.

TO WILLIAM GODWIN,

AUTHOR OF POLITICAL JUSTICE, CALEB WILLIAMS, &c.

THESE VOLUMES

Are respeclfully inseribed

BY

THE AUTHOR.

PREFACE.^a

^a Written in September, 1817 by P. B. Shelley, writing in the character of Mary Shelley. Additional comment on this Preface is to be found in the notes to the Introduction of 1831 (pp. 176-7).

The event on which this fiction is founded has been supposed, by Dr. Darwin,^b and some of the physiological writers of Germany,^c as not of impossible occurrence. I shall not be supposed as according the remotest degree of serious faith to such an imagination; yet, in assuming it as the basis of a work of fancy, I have not considered myself as merely weaving a series of supernatural terrors. The event on / which the interest of the story depends is exempt from the disadvantages of a mere tale of spectres or enchantment. It was recommended by the novelty of the situations which it developes; and, however impossible as a physical fact, affords a point of view to the imagination for the delineating of human passions more comprehensive and commanding than any which the ordinary relations of existing events can yield.

^b Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802), physician, scientist and author of The Botanic Garden (1791), Ζoonomia (1794-6) and The Temple of Nature (1803, all owned at one time by P. B. Shelley (PBSL, I, pp. 129, 342, 345); his evolutionary theory anticipates those of Lamarck and of his grandson Charles Darwin. There is no record of Mary Shelley's reading of Erasmus Darwin, but her references to him (in Matilda, Chapter ix, in a passage apparently alluding to the opening paragraph of the Advertisement to The Botanic Garden and in her 1831 Introduction) treat him as a familiar author.

^c Butler (1993), p. 259, suggests J. F. Blumenbach (1752-1840), cranioscopist and classifier of the human race into five families according to colour, and Friedrich Tiedemann (1781-1861); their work was publicised by the Shelleys' radical doctor, William Lawrence; Macdonald and Scherf (1994) suggest the proponents of 'Natur-philosophie', Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) and F. J. W. von Schelling (1775-1854); both made theoretical contributions to plant and animal morphology; Goethe was one of the discoverers of the intermaxillary bone in humans (1784); its supposed absence had previously been supposed to evidence an absolute physiological divide between humans and other primates. Mellor (p. 106) suggests, among others, Lorenz Oken of Jena (1779-1851), physiologist and morphologist; best known in 1816 for his Lehrbuch der Naturphilosophie (Leipzig, 1809-10). Oken both treated organic matter as a form of electrical action and developed an 'all-in-every-part' theory of physiology (all bones are modifications of the spinal column and all parts of higher animals are made of 'animated globular monads').

I have thus endeavoured to preserve the truth of the elementary principles of human nature, while I have not scrupled to innovate upon their combinations. The Iliad, the tragic poetry of Greece, - Shakespeare, in the Tempest and Midsummer / Night's Dream, - and most especially Milton, in Paradise Lost, conform to this rule; and the most humble novelist, who seeks to confer or receive amusement from his labours, may, without presumption, apply to prose fiction a licence, or rather a rule, from the adoption of which so many exquisite combinations of human feeling have resulted in the highest specimens of poetry.

The circumstance on which my story rests was suggested in casual conversation. It was commenced, partly as a source of amusement, and partly as an expedient for exercising any untried resources of mind. Other motives were mingled with these, as the work proceeded. / I am by no means indifferent to the manner in which whatever moral tendencies exist in the sentiments or characters it contains shall affect the reader; yet my chief concern in this respect has been limited to the avoiding the enervating effects of the novels of the present day, and to the exhibition of the amiableness of domestic affection, and the excellence of universal virtue. The opinions which naturally spring from the character and situation of the hero are by no means to be conceived as existing always in my own conviction; nor is any inference justly to be drawn from the following pages as prejudicing any philosophical doctrine of whatever kind. /

It is a subject also of additional interest to the author, that this story was begun in the majestic region where the scene is principally laid, and in society which cannot cease to be regretted. I passed the summer of 1816 in the environs of Geneva. The season was cold and rainy, and in the evenings we crowded around a blazing wood fire, and occasionally amused ourselves with some German stories of ghosts,^a which happened to fall into our hands. These tales excited in us a playful desire of imitation. Two other friends (a tale from the pen of one of whom would be far more acceptable to the public than any thing I can ever hope to produce) and / myself agreed to write each a story,^b founded on some supernatural occurrence.

^a Fantasmagoriana, ou recueil d'histoires d'apparitions de spectres, revenans, fantômes etc; traduit de l'allemand, par un amateur (Paris: Lenormant et Schoell, 1812), a translation by Jean Baptiste Benoît Eyriès (1767-1846) of the first two volumes of Der Gespensterbuch, 5 vols, eds Friedrich Schulze and Johann Apel (Leipzig: G. J. Goschen, 1811-15).

^b P. B, Shelley and Byron (George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron (1788-1824)); omitting Byron's doctor, John William Polidori (1795-1821), who might have been absent when the agreement was first made, though not later, and Claire Clairmont (1798-1879), who did not take part.

The weather, however, suddenly became serene; and my two friends left me on a journey among the Alps,^c and lost, in the magnificent scenes which they present, all memory of their ghostly visions. The following tale is the only one which has been completed.¹ /

^c Between 23-30 June 1816, Byron and P. B. Shelley toured the Lake of Geneva.

FRANKENSTEIN; OR, THE MODERN PROMETHEUS.

LETTER I.

To Mrs. SAVILLE, England.

St. Petersburgh, Dec. 11th, 17—.^a

^a The dash indicates a (fictive) editorial hand, which has deleted Walton's numerals in the 'originals'. The later reference to Volney's Ruines (1791) places the action in the 1790s; the year 1796 can be extrapolated by using the information (p. 16) that the next 31 July was on a Monday. This would place Walton in St Petersburg during the aftermath of Catherine the Great's death. But Wolf (1993) (pp. 333-7) has shown that 1796 is not reconcilable with the date of William Frankenstein's death (p. 51).

You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings. I arrived here yesterday; and my first task is to assure my dear sister of my welfare, and increasing confidence in the success of my undertaking.

I am already far north of London; and as I walk in the streets of Petersburgh, / I feel a cold northern breeze play upon my cheeks, which braces my nerves, and fills me with delight. Do you understand this feeling? This breeze, which has travelled from the regions towards which I am advancing, gives me a foretaste of those icy climes. Inspirited by this wind of promise, my day dreams become more fervent and vivid. I try in vain to be persuaded that the pole is the seat of frost and desolation; it ever presents itself to my imagination as the region of beauty and delight. There, Margaret,^a the sun is for ever¹ visible;² its broad disk just skirting the horizon, and diffusing a perpetual splendour. There - for with your leave, my sister, I will put some trust in preceding navigators there snow and frost are banished; and, sailing over a calm sea, we may be wafted to a land surpassing in wonders / and in beauty every region hitherto discovered on the habitable globe.^b Its productions and features may be without example, as the phænomena of the heavenly bodies undoubtedly are in those undiscovered solitudes. What may not be expected in a country of eternal light?³ I may there discover the wondrous power which attracts the needle;^c and may regulate a thousand celestial observations, that require only this voyage to render their seeming eccentricities consistent for ever. I shall satiate my ardent curiosity with the sight of a part of the world never before visited, and may tread a land never before imprinted by the foot of man. These are my enticements, and they are sufficient to conquer ail fear of danger or death, and to induce me to commence this laborious voyage with the joy a child feels when he embarks / in a little boat, with his holiday mates, on an expedition of discovery up his native river. But, supposing all these conjectures to be false, you cannot contest the inestimable benefit which I shall confer on all mankind to the last generation, by discovering a passage near the pole^d to those countries, to reach which at present so many months are requisite; or by ascertaining the secret of the magnet, which, if at all possible, can only be effected by an undertaking such as mine.

^a Walton's sister thus may be deduced to have the initials M. W. S.; Margaret is the name of the childhood confidante and 'dear heart's confessor' to the chief character of Charles Lamb's tragedy John Woodvil (1802); the phrase is quoted in The Last Man.

^b An argument that perpetual sun made for a mild polar climate is found in George Best's 'Discourse' in Richard Hakluyt's The Principal Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation (1589), possibly read by Mary Shelley as 'old voyages' in November 1816 (MWSJ, I, p. 146). Daines Barrington, of the Royal Society, in 'The Possibility of Approaching the North Pole Asserted' (1774, reissued 1818) proposed an ice-free polar sea, an argument based on unreliable mariners' tales. 'Glowing anticipations are confidently formed of the future amelioration of [the Arctic] climate, which would scarcely be hazarded even in the dreams of romance' (Edinburgh (1818), 2-5, commenting on hopes raised by Barrow's Arctic Expedition of 1818); for the Aurora Borealis as a possible Polar heat source, see the Quarterly (1816a), 171; see too P. B. Shelley's use of a legendary polar paradise in The Revolt of Islam (1818), I. xlvii-liv.

^c 'There is still a great field remains for future discoveries' (Darwin, botanic Garden, pt 1, II. 193n., on magnetism); see Quarterly (1816a), 171-2 and n. for theories that mysterious compass irregularities in the Arctic were caused by cold or by 'the attraction of particular islands'.

^d Three passages are theoretically Walton's object: the north-west, the north-east and (boldest of all) the polar, dependent on the existence of an unfrozen Arctic Ocean. The La Belle Assemblée reviewer (see Introductory Note) assumed the first, but, if so, Walton would not set off from Archangel. The second had been abandoned by British ex...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Abbreviations
• Symbols used in this Edition
• General Introduction
• Editorial Note
• Chronology of Life and Works
• Acknowledgements
• Introductory Note to Frankenstein
• FRANKENSTEIN
• Mary Shelley's Introduction to the 1831 Edition
• Endnotes: Textual Variants
• Silent Corrections
• Appendices to Editorial Not
• Appendix 2: Obsolete and Idiosyncratic Forms in this Edition
• Appendix 3: Unconfirmed, Doubtful and Spurious Attributions