Who Wrote Frankenstein? Mary Shelley, Her Age, and How the Novel Began
A ghost story contest by Lake Geneva, an anonymous first edition and a teenage author
Mary Shelley and Frankenstein: the timeline
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| August 1797 | Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin is born in London |
| June 1816 | At Villa Diodati, Lord Byron proposes a ghost story contest; Mary, 18, begins her tale |
| December 1816 | She marries the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley |
| April or May 1817 | She finishes the novel, aged 19 |
| 1 January 1818 | First edition, anonymous, three volumes, 500 copies |
| 1823 | Second edition, now with her name |
| 31 October 1831 | Revised one-volume edition with her famous introduction |
| 1 February 1851 | Mary Shelley dies in London, aged 53 |
Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein. She began it in June 1816, at the age of 18, finished it in 1817 and saw it published anonymously in London on 1 January 1818, when she was 20.
The book is not based on a real event. It grew out of a ghost story contest among friends on a stormy summer at Lake Geneva.
How did Mary Shelley come up with Frankenstein?
In the summer of 1816, Mary Godwin, her future husband Percy Bysshe Shelley and her stepsister Claire Clairmont stayed near Lake Geneva. Close by, at Villa Diodati, Lord Byron was living with his young doctor, John Polidori. It was the cold, wet year later called the year without a summer, and the friends spent long evenings indoors reading ghost stories.
Byron suggested that each of them write one. For days Mary had nothing. Then came a late conversation about whether a dead body might be brought back to life, and about experiments with electricity that seemed to make dead muscles move. Afterwards she lay awake and saw, in a waking dream, a pale student kneeling beside the thing he had put together, watching it stir. She described that night in the introduction to the 1831 edition.
↑ Back to the topHow old was Mary Shelley when she wrote Frankenstein?
She was 18 when she began it in June 1816, 19 when she finished it in the spring of 1817, and 20 when it was published at the start of 1818. What began as a few pages for the contest grew, with Percy's encouragement, into a full novel.
↑ Back to the topWhy was Frankenstein published anonymously?
The first edition of 1818 carried no author's name. It was a small printing of 500 copies in three volumes from a little-known London publisher, with a dedication to Mary's father, the philosopher William Godwin. Many readers and reviewers assumed Percy Shelley had written it. Her name appeared on the second edition in 1823, after a successful stage version had made the story famous.
↑ Back to the topWhat is the difference between the 1818 and 1831 editions?
In 1831 Mary Shelley revised the book for a cheap one-volume edition. She rewrote the first chapter, made Elizabeth an adopted orphan instead of Victor's cousin, softened some passages and added the introduction about the ghost story contest. Many scholars treat the two texts almost as different novels. Most school editions today use 1831, and many academic editions prefer 1818, so check which one your class needs.
↑ Back to the topIs Frankenstein based on a true story?
No. There was no real Victor Frankenstein and no real creature. The novel draws on the science and talk of its time, especially experiments that ran electric current through dead animals and made them twitch, but the story itself is invented. Its full title, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, links Victor to the figure of Greek myth who shaped human beings and was punished for overreaching.
↑ Back to the topHow long is Frankenstein, and where does it take place?
Frankenstein is a short novel, about 75,000 words. Depending on the edition and print size, that usually means somewhere between 200 and 300 pages, and most readers finish it in six to eight hours.
The story is set in the late 1700s and moves a great deal: Geneva and the Alps, the university town of Ingolstadt in Germany, England, the Orkney Islands of Scotland, the coast of Ireland and finally the frozen Arctic, where the explorer Walton's ship is trapped in the ice.
↑ Back to the topMore about Frankenstein
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