Celebrated each year on the last Friday of October, Frankenstein Friday pays homage to one of the most influential horror stories of all time: Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus.
Mary Shelley created the story of the mad scientist, Victor Frankenstein, and his creation on a rainy afternoon in 1816 in Geneva, Switzerland. She was vacationing there with her husband, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, their friend Lord Byron, and Lord Byron's physician, John Polidori. The group, trapped indoors by the inclement weather, passed the time telling and writing ghost stories. The ideas for Frankenstein and Polidori's The Vampyre, which was published in 1819, were both born that day.
Frankenstein was anonymously published two years after, when Mary was only 20 years old. Percy Shelley wrote the preface, leading many people to assume he wrote the book. Shelley republished it under her own name in 1823, with a third edition coming eight years later that explained how the story came to be. Since then, the book has been reprinted hundreds of times in dozens of languages and has inspired more than 60 films and shorts, the first of which was produced by Edison Studios in 1910. Frankenstein featured the first use of the "mad scientist" character that has become so familiar to us, and is generally considered to be the first science fiction novel ever.
Want to celebrate? Check out some of our Frankenstein-y print, audio, and e-books! Click on the pictures for more details!
Best audiobook
I like this audio version best because is uses different voice actors for different characters, which is not only interesting, but also makes the story easier to follow, since you know who's talking.
Best e-book
The Barnes & Noble Classics have a lot of extra material accompanying their stories. In Frankenstein, there's a timeline of Mary Shelley's life, some critical essays, comments from other authors, and even study questions. If you don't want to delve that deeply, you can just go straight to the novel, but the other info is there if you're interested.
Best graphic adaptation
I mean, look at the cover. How is that not awesome? The actual novel is long and sometimes a little dry, but the graphic adaptation has all the best parts of the story to accompany the dynamic artwork.
Some retellings
The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein: The classic
story told from the perspective of Elizabeth Lavenza, Victor Frankenstein's fiancée, who has only a small role in Shelley's novel. You can see my complete review here.
UnWholly: Cam is a futuristic Frankenstein's monster, made up entirely of parts stripped from other teenagers. The book explores topics similar to those addressed in Shelley's novel, particularly what it means to be human. This is actually the second book in Shusterman's Unwind trilogy, so maybe start with book one?
Nonfiction
Mary's Monster: This is a biography of Mary Shelley told in free-verse and illustrated with dark, haunting watercolors. Her story is kind of insane: She ran away with the married Percy Shelley when she was just 16 years old, wrote Frankenstein at age 18 (by which time she had already lost a baby shortly after its birth), and published it at 21. She and Percy travelled a great deal, mostly to stay ahead of Percy's creditors. When Percy died young in a boating accident, she had his body cremated. His heart, however, would not burn, due to calcification from a previous bout of tuberculosis, so...she kept it in a pouch around her neck. For realsies, Mary Shelley wore her dead husband's crusty heart as a necklace until she herself died. Don't tell me you don't want to read more about this lady!
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