NEWS: Who Wrote Frankenstein?

CULTURE: Who Wrote Frankenstein?

Fittingly, the story behind the creation of the novel Frankenstein is almost as famous as that of the monster itself.

Mary Shelley, only nineteen at the time, spent the cold summer of 1816 with her future husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley; Lord Byron; and Byron’s doctor, John William Polidori. Due to the subnormal temperatures, the group was forced to stay indoors where they entertained each other by reading from a book of German ghost stories. When Lord Byron challenged the group to write their own stories, Mary Shelley came up with the first spark that would become the classic Frankenstein. Remarkably, Polidori was also inspired by Byron that night and later wrote what is considered to be the first modern vampire story, The Vampyre . Two horror greats were born that night. It don't get any more goth than that, people.

Now, however, one scholar is claiming that the story might not be true, at least when it comes to Mary Shelley and her monster. How did a marginally-educated nineteen-year old come up with what is now thought of as one of the first science-fiction novels, and why didn't she ever write anything of merit again? Perhaps she wasn’t the author at all, according to John Lauritsen, who claims that Percy Bysshe Shelley actually wrote the novel.

Lauritsen also points out that the first edition of Frankenstein was published with no author credited and was roundly panned by the critics of the time. Obviously, a book like this is going to cause some controversy, but at least one critic, Camille Paglia, writing in Salon sees the novel as not only an important investigation, but a shot fired across the bow of academia as well.

Will a village of angry scholars armed with pitchforks and torches be coming for Lauritsen when his book, The Man Who Wrote Frankenstein comes out next month? Only time will tell.

when i read it in high school i thought the same thing, but the cool thing its about mary having written it, a young 19 year old with mystery horror ideas in her head, why isnt it possible...

I would think that Frankenstein originally being uncredited would be more evidence of Mary's authorship. A woman writing a horror story would've been harder for the general public to swallow, particularly in her era.

For my part, my recollections of the book were that it was written by an extraordinarily talented amateur. The core concept was brilliant, but no much some of the execution (e.g. the explanation for the monster learning language).

Its...Franken...steen...

i've always been amazed at hearing how all these great authors and composers come up with such brilliant stuff at an age when i (and most of my peers) were primarily concerned with partying all the time.

mozart penned his first symphony at what, ten? carson mccullers wrote the heart is a lonely hunter at 23.

when i was 19, aside from being pretty darn good at theoretical math, i played keyboard in a terrible attempt at a new-wave band and decoupaged (so not a verb) picture frames.

how do these people exist?

anyway, i like the idea of "independent" scholarship giving the finger to the man, and it's an interesting premise. i'll have to read the book. however, i'm not convinced that a tender age and a lack of a first-rate education are insurmountable barriers to genius.

There wolf.

Mary and her husband were indeed inseparable back then. It's possible that Percy's influences are overwhelming in the novel, but it's unlikely that he would be the author. Frankenstein is a feminist tale, and while Percy was ahead of his time, he was still a man. Although it's very possible he edited it and added things to it. Why not? Mary likely added things to his poetry as well... they were classic lovers.

wait, your argument is that percy couldn't have written a feminist work because he is a man?

This is exactly what I was thinking, I mean what with the helped writing it thing. People who aren't authors but have writers help with the story happen alot....I think?

What does that mean?

Your life expectancy is also about 30 years longer than theirs was.

So lets piece this broad back together and ask her a few questions.

so they had to get a head start i guess? i guess we have the creation of adolescence to blame.

awesome article, i was actually just discussing this with a friend the other day.

There castle.

You mean "creation of adolescents" don't you?

Wouldn't surprise me. Shakespeare's a fraud too; the man never saw anything out of Avon and he was uneducated. As is Homer, blind and illiterate as he was.

Still, mythology is important in a culture, and this takes on a sort of mythological quality. The same goes for the West, in my opinion. Every Western is historically inaccurate, but that doesn't take away from their mythological merit in our society. The same goes for Mary Shelly. And if her husband did pass on his name on the work, then he wanted to see his wife succeed, and did a remarkable thing for women back in the day, and we should celebrate it in that respect as well.

i'm so confused.

firstly, a vastly shorter life expectancy means you're an adult much earlier in life. in mozart's day people were getting married at 12 and 13 sometimes which would make 10 years old an analog to about today's 14 or 15. a prodigy, certainly, but by no means absurd.

second, mozart was given intense instruction from a very early age (3) by his father who was a leading music teacher in europe at the time.

third, mozart had ZERO distractions. no tv, no video games, no interweb, no cars - which means your world is much smaller...travel was brutally difficult and not undertaken lightly in those days. all means he just sat around day-in and day-out playing, learning, and composing music.

we have analogs in our time, look at gymnasts. their lives, similar to mozart's, are driven by an unbelievable dedication to their sport so that they excel at the topmost level by their early teens (when their bodies are best suited to it)

so...take anyone with a natural talent for some activity, remove all distractions, remove the "adolescent" years (ie. you go directly from child to adult at about 13/14 or so), and give them intense instruction by one of the world's leading teachers every single day...i daresay you'll end up with a child prodigy on your hands.

yeah yeah, i know everything happened much earlier back then (marriage, etc) and there was no myspace and all. like i said, adolescence is probably largely to blame.

and yes, i'm also aware that we have such child prodigies today, like the top gymnasts. my remark was mostly about how incredible it is--i daresay even more today, what with the distractions and all.

Dr. Frankenstein, you know, created the monster.

I'm pretty sure the argument that their life expectancy was shorter is a fallacy.

While the average life span in the 1800s was certainly much lower than it is today (at least in the first world), those numbers are skewed by very high infant mortality rates. People in the 1800s (and even in antiquity) routinely lived to ages that are common today, especially amongst the upper class, to which the Shelley's belonged.

Ironically, both of them DID die young -- Mary of a brain tumor, and Percy of drowning -- but these kinds of deaths are and were, of course, exceptions to the norm.

I don't think any young people of Mary Shelley's generation were motivated towards creativity at a young age out of fear of an early death, because they had no reason to expect one.

She wasn't just an uneducated 19 year old. Her mother was the feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, who wrote "A Vindication of the Rights of Women"; her father, the anarchist philosopher William Godwin, famous for "An Enquiry concerning Political Justice".

As a young girl, Godwin encouraged Mary to take part in philosophical debates, and ensured that she had an excellent education, even though she never went to a conventional school. She was part of an intellectual circle that included Charles Lamb and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, as well as Shelley and Byron. She published her first poem at 11, and went on to write many novels - though none as successful as Frankenstein.

So why is it inconceivable that this talented young woman could write a ground-breaking novel? It had to be written by her husband ... I've heard this line before somewhere!

Ken Russell make a really great film about that night in Byron's castle, and the supernatural incidents that it entails: Gothic, with Natasha Richardson as Mary Shelley, Julian Sands as Percy Shelley, Gabriel Byrne as Lord Byron, and Timothy Spall as Polidori. Really eerie, disturbing flick--highly recommended.