Frankenstein - by Mary Shelley & Melissa Marr & Amanda Shaffer (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Science meets horror in a new edition of a classic, featuring illustrations by Amanda Shaffer and an introduction by bestselling author Melissa Marr.
One dreary summer on the shores of Lake Geneva, amid discussions of galvanism and the occult and fireside readings from a collection of German ghost stories, Lord Byron proposed a game. Each of his guests--eighteen-year-old Mary Godwin and her future husband, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, among them--would try their hand at writing a tale of the supernatural. Unable at first to think of a plot, Mary was visited one sleepless night by the terrible vision of a corpse, a "hideous phantasm of a man," lurching to life with the application of some unknown, powerful force. The man responsible, a "pale student of unhallowed arts," fled in horror from his creation, leaving it to return to the dead matter from which it had been born. But the monster did not die. It followed the man to his bedside, where it stood watching him with "yellow, watery, but speculative eyes"--eyes of one who thought and felt.

The novel that Mary Shelley would go on to publish, the legend of Victor Frankenstein and his unholy creation, and their obsessive, murderous pursuit of each other from Switzerland to the North Pole, has been the stuff of nightmares for nearly two centuries. A masterpiece of Romantic literature, it is also one of the most enduring horror stories ever written, dramatized by Shaffer's full-page original illustrations that bring the monster's tale to dramatic life. New York Times-bestselling author Marr places Mary Shelley in the pantheon of female trailblazers, among such notables as Greta Thunberg and Taylor Swift, citing Shelley as the first woman writer of science fiction; a girl, underestimated, providing one of the most recognizable stories of all time.

Review Quotes

"A remarkable work . . . fueled by the kind of grotesque, faintly absurd, and wildly inventive images that spring direct from the unconscious." --Joyce Carol Oates

"A mystical morality tale about what happens when man dares to transgress the limits of knowledge." --Stephen King

About the Author

Mary Shelley (1797-1851) was the only daughter of the political philosopher William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, celebrated author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. At the age of sixteen, Shelley (then Mary Godwin) scandalized English society by eloping with the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, who was married. Best known for the genre-defining Frankenstein (1818), she was a prolific writer of fiction, travelogues, and biographies during her lifetime, and was instrumental in securing the literary reputation of Percy Shelley after his tragic death.
Melissa Marr is the New York Times bestselling author of the Wicked Lovely series. The series has sold in 24 languages to date, appeared on bestseller lists abroad, and is in development with Universal Studios for a major motion picture. She is also the co-author (with Kelley Armstrong) of the upcoming Blackwell Pages and co-editor (with Armstrong) of the forthcoming YA anthologies, Enthralled (2011) and Entrapped (2013).

Tim Pratt is a Hugo Award-winning science fiction and fantasy author whose works have been nominated for most of the major genre awards. His stories have been reprinted in numerous Year's Best anthologies, including the Best American Short Stories. He is a senior editor at Locus, the magazine of the science fiction and fantasy field, and edited the 2010 anthology Sympathy for the Devil.