Talk:Frankenstein

Reading list

We need to divide up the reading list. Some of these books I have already read, so I just moved those to my list. Laser, why don't you choose first and then I'll read the rest.

Awadewit:

• Behrendt, Stephen C., ed. Approaches to Teaching Shelley's Frankenstein. New York: MLA, 1990. ISBN 087352540X.
• Bennett, Betty T. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley: An Introduction. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998. ISBN 080185976X.
• Clery, E. J. Women's Gothic: From Clara Reeve to Mary Shelley. Plymouth: Northcote House, 2000. ISBN 0746308728.
• Ellis, Kate Ferguson. The Contested Castle: Gothic Novels and the Subversion of Domestic Ideology. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989. ISBN 0252060482.
• Forry, Steven Earl. Hideous Progenies: Dramatizations of "Frankenstein" from Mary Shelley to the Present. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990.
• Gilbert, Sandra M. and Susan Gubar. The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination. 1979. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984. ISBN 0300025963.
• Hoeveler, Diane Long. Gothic Feminism: The Professionalization of Gender from Charlotte Smith to the Brontës. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998. ISBN 0271018097.
• Knoepflmacher, U. C. and George Levine, eds. The Endurance of "Frankenstein": Essays on Mary Shelley's Novel. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979. ISBN 0520046404.
• Macdonald, D.L. and Kathleen Scherf. "Introduction". Frankenstein. 2nd ed. Peterborough: Broadview Press, 1999. ISBN 1551113082.
• Mellor, Anne K. Mary Shelley: Her Life, Her Fiction, Her Monsters. New York: Methuen, 1988. ISBN 0416017614.
• Moers, Ellen. Literary Women.
• Poovey, Mary. The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer: Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley, and Jane Austen. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984. ISBN 0226675289.
• Rieger, James. "Dr. Polidori and the Genesis of Frankenstein". Studies in English Literature 3.4 (1963): 461-472.
• Rubinstein, Marc A. ""My Accursed Origin": The Search for the Mother in Frankenstein". Studies in Romanticism 15.2 (1976): 165-94.
• Schor, Esther, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Mary Shelley. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. ISBN 0521007704.
• Seymour, Miranda. Mary Shelley. New York: Grove Press, 2000. ISBN 0802139485.
• Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. New York: W. W. Norton and Co.
• Skal, David. The Monster Show: A Cultural history of horror. Faber and Faber, 2001. ISBN 0571199968.
• Smith, Johanna M., ed. Frankenstein. Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 1992.
• Spark, Muriel. Mary Shelley. London: Cardinal, 1987. ISBN 9780747403180.
• St Clair, William. "The Impact of Frankenstein". Eds. Bennett, Betty T. and Stuart Curran. Mary Shelley in Her Times. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000. ISBN 0801863341.
• Sunstein, Emily W. Mary Shelley: Romance and Reality. 1989. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991. ISBN 0801842182.
• Vasbinder, S. H. Scientific Attitudes in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein: Newtonian Monism as a Basis for the Novel. Kent State University Press, 1976.
• Williams, Anne. The Art of Darkness: A Poetics of Gothic. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995. ISBN 0226899071.

Laser brain:

• Aldiss, Brian W. "On the Origin of Species: Mary Shelley". Speculations on Speculation: Theories of Science Fiction. Eds. James Gunn and Matthew Candelaria. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow, 2005.
• Baldick, Chris. In Frankenstein's Shadow: Myth, Monstrosity, and Nineteenth-Century Writing. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987.
• Bann, Stephen, ed. "Frankenstein": Creation and Monstrosity. London: Reaktion, 1994.
• Bohls, Elizabeth A. "Standards of Taste, Discourses of 'Race', and the Aesthetic Education of a Monster: Critique of Empire in Frankenstein". Eighteenth-Century Life 18.3 (1994): 23–36.
• Botting, Fred. Making Monstrous: "Frankenstein", Criticism, Theory. New York: St. Martin's, 1991.
• Butler, Marilyn. "Introduction". Frankenstein. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. ISBN 0192833669.
• Donawerth, Jane. Frankenstein's Daughters: Women Writing Science Fiction. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1997.
• Dunn, Richard J. "Narrative Distance in Frankenstein". Studies in the Novel 6.4 (1974): 408–17.
• Freedman, Carl. "Hail Mary: On the Author of Frankenstein and the Origins of Science Fiction". Science Fiction Studies 29.2 (2002): 253–64.
• Gigante, Denise. "Facing the Ugly: The Case of Frankenstein". ELH 67.2 (2000): 565–87.
• Heffernan, James A. W. "Looking at the Monster: Frankenstein and Film". Critical Inquiry 24.1 (1997): 133–58.
• Hindle, Maurice. "Vital Matters: Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Romantic Science". Critical Survey 2.1 (1990) 29-35.
• Hodges, Devon. "Frankenstein and the Feminine Subversion of the Novel". Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature 2.2 (1983): 155–64.
• Holmes, Richard. Shelley: The Pursuit. 1974. London: Harper Perennial, 2003. ISBN 0007204582.
• Kiely, Robert. The Romantic Novel in England. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972. ISBN 0674779355.
• Levine, George. The Realistic Imagination: English Fiction from Frankenstein to Lady Chatterly. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983. ISBN 0226475514.
• Lew, Joseph W. "The Deceptive Other: Mary Shelley's Critique of Orientalism in Frankenstein". Studies in Romanticism 30.2 (1991): 255–83.
• London, Bette. "Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, and the Spectacle of Masculinity". PMLA 108.2 (1993): 256–67.
• Marshall, Tim. Murdering to dissect: grave-robbing, Frankenstein and the anatomy literature. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995. ISBN 0719045436.
• Miles, Robert. Gothic Writing 1750–1820: A Genealogy. London: Routledge, 1993.
• O'Flinn, Paul. "Production and Reproduction: The Case of Frankenstein". Literature and History 9.2 (1983): 194–213.
• Moers, Ellen. "Female Gothic: Monsters, Goblins, Freaks". New York Review of Books 21 (4 April ?).
• Rauch, Alan. "The Monstrous Body of Knowledge in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein". Studies in Romanticism 34.2 (1995): 227–53.
• Stableford, Brian. "Frankenstein and the Origins of Science Fiction". Anticipations: Essays on Early Science Fiction and Its Precursors. Ed. David Seed. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1995.
• Tropp, Martin. Mary Shelley's Monster. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1976.

Notes

Talk:Frankenstein/Notes

Inconsistent Publishing Dates

The introduction says the 2nd edition was published in 1821 but later it says it was published in 1831. I'm busy rn but we should fix that :þ Light-In-The-Fog (talk) 08:06, 29 December 2025 (UTC) Light-In-The-Fog (talk) 08:06, 29 December 2025 (UTC)

I've changed it to say the 1821 was a French translation, not a second edition. DuncanHill (talk) 23:23, 27 May 2026 (UTC)

Sources

1. https://www.indiewire.com/gallery/history-frankenstein-film-movies/mcdpoth-h4041/

PanagiotisZois (talk) 23:19, 27 May 2026 (UTC)

Status as the first science fiction is presented without counter arguments. Probably Incorrect.

From the top of my head, there is at least one writer associated with science-fiction before Mary Shelley, and that is ETA Hoffmann. His works predate Frankenstein by just a few years, but it is what it is. Since I am not an expert on the topic, I cannot in turn uphold that Hoffmann is the first science fiction author, but there must be at least some critical discussion on this.

Provided the fact that I can come up with a counter-example, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is almost certainly NOT the first work of science fiction.

UPDATE: Since I feel that my point of critique should be more in line with Wikipedia standards, let me add that the assessment of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is based on Brian W. Aldiss' essay alone. While the Wikipedia article on ETA Hoffmann presents an essay of Algys Budrys, stating that ETA Hoffmann should be regarded as a major influence on science fiction, if not one of the first science fiction authors himself. So beyond reasonable doubt, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is a very early masterpiece in Science Fiction, but there is not much grounds to support her as the first science fiction writer.

~2026-28219-30 (talk) 12:19, 20 June 2026 (UTC)