MYTH: Frankenstein, the most famous work of English Romanticism, was written by an uneducated, teenaged girl, who took part in a ghost-story contest in Geneva, had a nightmare, and was inspired to write a story “which would frighten my reader as I myself had been frightened that night!”
REALITY: Frankenstein is a work of profound and radical ideas, written by one of the greatest poets and prose stylists in the English language, who for personal reasons chose to conceal his authorship. —The man who wrote FRANKENSTEIN (ASP Wholesale)
From the publisher’s website. The only review I’ve seen so far is from Camille Paglia.
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It’s funny that although Mary Shelley, by all accounts among those who knew her an extremely intelligent and well-read woman, edited all of Shelley’s poems, in some cases extensively, no one has EVER attributed the authorship of any of them to her. And as uninspiring as some of her other novels were, they were enormously better and better written than Shelley’s two novels (St. Irvyne, and Zastrozzi). I think that if Shelley said she wrote “Frankenstein” and she said she wrote it (and their friends agreed), it’s because she wrote it. Yes, Shelley clearly helped. The pages of her journal missing from the time when she wrote “Frankenstein” may have something to do with a sexual affair she was encouraged by Shelley to have with his friend, Hogg, around that time period. I have read all their letters and all her journal.
As for male love, Shelley was so interested in women that he always kept at least two living with him. He fathered more children than any other of the major male Romantic poets. He wrote many love poems to various women and none, that we know of at least, to men. I have nothing against the idea of him being homosexual; I simply don’t see any evidence for the claim. It would take more than talk of male friendship and sympathy in Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” to convince me. I have read the 1818 edition of “Frankenstein” many, many times, and there is nothing out of the ordinary in its discussion of male friendship. Men did indeed talk about loving each other in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century, much as heterosexual women talk of loving their friends now. Since the premise that the book is about male forbidden love is the ostensible rational for the misattributed authorship to Mary, the whole thing falls apart. I would find it easier to believe Shelley wrote “Frankenstein” than to think that the subject of “Frankenstein” was forbidden male love.
‘he had sworn to quit the neighbourhood of man and hide himself in deserts, but she had not; and she, who in all probability was to become a thinking and reasoning animal, might refuse to comply with a compact made before her creation…’ hardly the words of PB Shelley.
Percy Shelley was the schoolboy who wrote two perfectly crappy gothic novels before getting kicked out of Oxford (hardly “educated” there). He never wrote a successful novel, and he didn’t write Frankenstein. His very close friend Thomas Love Peacock, who knew them both at the time (and who did write good novels), completely accepted Mary’s authorship. Peacock lived on into the 1850s and had plenty of time after Mary died to spill the beans. There is an overwhelming amount of factual and circumstantial evidence that points to Mary’s authorship.
The stupidist remarks–in the era of Burns and Blake!–are that you need some quota of rote Latin and Greek (an Eton and Oxford education) to write imaginatively literature. That’s such a load of crap it hardly bears commenting on. None of the books mentioned in Frankenstein were part of any curriculum at these schools in the Romantic era. Not even Milton.
Mary Godwin was better read and better educated than Jane Austen at the same age. Last I heard no woman-hating crank claims she didn’t write Pride and Prejudice.
ITS MARY SHELLY
You raise some interesting questions, but you’d have to bear the burden of proof.
I don’t have any independent expertise in this subject, but I’d like to think it should be possible to discuss a textual issue rationally, without sinking to the level of ad hominem arguments. But that’s just me.
Could it be that Mr. Lauritsen is guilty of perhaps just a tad bit of contempt for women in general? Why would he go to such lengths? Is it not entirely possible that the idea for the novel was generated by Mary Shelley and embellished by her famous husband who wanted her to have recognition for her ideas? Here we have another example of male chauvinsim from the uber-educated mindset who over-emphasize the seeming importance of genitalia of the literati as if the sex lives of historic intellectuals had paramount importance in the culmination of great works.
Thanks for posting your reflections, Carl. The mythology surrounding the story, and lots of literary criticism that depend on the narrator being female, are called into question by these arguments. But the novel itself retains its intrinsic value regardless of who wrote it,
After examining John Lauritsen’s evidence, I am now more convinced that Percy Bysshe Shelley, indeed, wrote Frankenstein. The textual evidence Lauritsen presents is convincing and compelling. The novel was originally published anonymously in London in 1818 with a Preface that was written by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Mary admitted that. Mary only took credit for the novel in 1823 when it was reprinted and after Percy Bysshe Shelley had died. Diary entries concerning the period when the novel was written are also missing and have probably been destroyed by Mary. The style of the writing is closer to Percy’s earlier writings than to Mary’s later writings. There are lines like “glut the maw” which only Percy could have written. Also, the novel is about large ideas and issues, about Greek allusions, the analogy to Prometheus, which only Percy could have contributed. Mary was not a poet. Mary did not have that vision thing, seeing the story in a wider philosophical context.
Percy went to Eton and Oxford. Mary was schooled at home. William Godwin was a novelist and philosopher, but can that equal a university education at arguably one of the best universities in the world, Oxford? Mary never was able to follow up the success of the novel. She continued writing zombie-like novels about reviving dead people, but they were all flops and not very well written. Why didn’t the zombie theme work? I would argue that because they lacked the vision that Percy contributed to the first one. Percy was an iconoclast, a visionary firebrand with daring who spat at convention and the establishment. Mary wrote decent zombie ghost stories. But it was Percy Bysshe Shelley who turned the zombie or vampire-type of book into something more, something bigger and larger.
Percy Shelley did write Gothic horror novels. Zostrozzi was written in 1810 and St. Irvyne in 1811, with a chapbook version called Wolfstein which followed. Certainly, these were the precursors for the novel. In 1819, he wrote Prometheus Unbound, the same theme as the novel, about Prometheus, who created human beings and gave them fire, which wreaked havoc.
Lauritsen examined different editions of the novel and found that Mary and her father toned down the original 1818 version and weakened the text to make it more tame. Why would they do this? Why was it initially published anonymously? Why did Mary take sole credit for the book only after Percy had died?
Lauritsen’s book is a fascinating analysis. It, at the very least, shows how important a role Percy Bysshe Shelley played in the creation of the novel.
We know the Hollywood version had very little in common with the book. There was no laboratory or Tesla coils or “monster” in the novel. The Being as Percy called him, was in fact, of normal appearance and looked attractive, could think and talk. Boris Karloff created the opposite image of a monster. It was Hollywood that created the image we now have of the book. But the original book was nothing like the 1931 Universal movie. The original book was much closer to a Gothic novel by Percy Bysshe Shelley, more like Promethous Unbound and Zastrozzi. The point is that Mary is getting way too much credit than she deserves. Let us give credit where credit is due and acknowledge the enormous contribution Percy Bysshe Shelley made to the book.
Percy Bysshe Shelley most likely contributed to the novel. Percy and Mary did collaborate on a travel book that was published in circa 1817. My own take is that Percy Shelley helped Mary write the novel but kept his name off because he wanted her to receive the recognition. Percy wrote the Preface to the novel but kept his name off. This created a lot of confusion because people recognized that he had written the Preface, not Mary Shelley. This created the impression that Percy actually wrote the entire book. In his review of the novel, Percy refers to the author as “his” novel.
The allusion to Prometheus is probably something that Percy contributed to the novel. Percy wrote a dramatic verse play entitled Prometheus Unbound in 1819, probably his most famous work. The novel was subtitled: “The Modern Prometheus”. I don’t think Mary came up with that. That was a poetical allusion that most likely came from Percy. Then there is the poetic terminology like “maw” for mouth which clearly shows Percy’s fingerprints. I don’t think a non-poet would use those words. Then there are the philosophical dialogues that Percy probably had a hand in. Moreover, Percy was a fan of Gothic novels and wrote two himself, Zastrozzi in 1810 and St. Irvyne in 1811. Then there was the influence of William Godwin, her father, and his Gothic novel St. Leon, about how he had found the secret to immortality.
There is no question that Percy Shelley contributed to the novel. But that he actually wrote it himself is probably going too far.
Lauritson ignroes the fact that Mary Shelley was educated at home by William Godwin, the foremost philospher of the day in England. Both he and Mary’s mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, were novelists, and Mary grew up repeatedly reading her mother’s books (M.W.had died shortly after giving birth to her.) Godwin taught her Latin, but refused to teach her Greek as unnecessary to a woman. (She began to study it after her marriage to P.B.Shelley.)
isnt it by mary shelly…