Mary Shelley was born in London in 1797, the daughter of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, two radical writers. Her mother died when she was only ten days old. In 1816 she married Percy Bysshe Shelley, then unknown, and they lived in Italy until Shelley's death in 1822. The idea for Frankenstein came to her when she was staying on Lake Geneva in 1816 but was not published for two years. She wrote several other novels and contributed to the Westminster Review. She died in February 1851."
Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus was written by Mary Shelley; wife of the famous English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley; and published in 1818. The book is a foray into the genre of Gothic-horror fiction and one of the first of its kind. It deals with the ethical issues of advancing technology and explores man's relationship with his maker at an allegorical level.
The three most important aspects of Frankenstein:
- Although Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is compelling in and of itself, it also functions on a symbolic level or levels, with Frankenstein's monster standing in for the coming of industrialization to Europe — and the death and destruction that the monster wreaks symbolizing the ruination that Shelley feared industrialization would eventually cause.
- The novel contains a number of "framing devices," which are stories that surround other stories, setting them up in one way or another. Robert Walton's letters to his sister frame the story that Victor Frankenstein tells to Walton, and Frankenstein's story surrounds the story that the monster tells, which in turn frames the story of the De Lacey family.
- Frankenstein is a gothic novel. Gothic novels focus on the mysterious or supernatural; take place in dark, often exotic, settings; and yield unease if not terror in their readers. The double is a frequent feature of the Gothic novel, and in a sense Frankenstein and his monster are doubles. Some literary historians also consider Frankenstein the first science fiction novel.
