Hey ron, thanks. Great post.

Cheers!

Thx for that. It is such a nonsense phrase that it immediately (to me, anyway) throws his credibility into doubt. It's funny, actually. One wonders, is his whole case equally conclusive?

This is isn't directly related, but have you heard of Philip Tetlock and his book Expert Political Judgement. Great review here.

Nuggets:

and

Tetlock studied academics and specialists as prognosticators, not on domain expertise or willingness to change opinions, but there's a similar thread.

Right. I distinguish between predictions -- statements of a causal nature, as in "if x, then y" -- as opposed to forecasts -- "this is what I think is going to happen tomorrow".

Forecasting is a dangerous game. Well, it's dangerous if your credibility is on the line.

I would further comment that is is common knowledge that Percy edited and, indeed, rewrote passages of "Frankenstein" for Mary. They both said as much. It would therefore stand to reason that certain phrases and passages would contain his authorial voice, but it is hardly proof that Percy wrote the novel. This has been pretty widely known and accepted for over a century and a half now. The supposedly accurate and quite unflattering portrait of Percy thay Mary incorporates into the character of Victor (an indecisive intellectual, ignoring the consequences of his actions, refusing to take responsibility, and fainting in every uncomfortable situation) could not have been created by the man himself. He was simply not that self-aware, and, most claim, Percy was so egotistical and self-deluded that such self-criticism would have been an impossibility.

And, in addition to the prodigy phenominon discussed above, what ron said so eloquently bears repeating: "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."

He is quite right, and equally correct when he recounts the stories of Mary and Claire visiting the Castle Frankenstein where Dipple tried to create life. In short, seems to me that some dude's just trying to sell a book. I firmly believe that Mary wrote it (with substantial "input" from Percy).

At what point was the author Mary, historically speaking?

Who wrote Frankenstein?

I DID

I'd probably give up 30 years of my life in exchange for being a prodigy.

Literally, the beginning, middle and end. Percy did some rewrites in between, but it was Mary's novel.

Exactly

Artists and other creative types always influence each other - even just friends and family pick up expressions and mannerisms of those in our environment, so why not? Not that Mr. Shelley's gender precluded him from writing a feminist work - I admittedly don't know too much of his work, but he seemed to have a pretty flexible mind from what I have read.

And, while I have only read the first page of this thread and this has probably been addressed, it seems to me feasible that Mr. Shelley did some editing to Ms. Shelley's work (and I'm somewhat surprised that in this thread people refer to Mr. Shelley as simply Shelley; while in other instances it would be obviously Mr. Shelley referred to, but in an article about TWO Shelleys, the masculocentric assumption really doesn't fit.

so....when it first came out, it was panned by critics,
But now that it has been popular for over a century, it couldn't have been written by her...

apparently Lauritsen has never heard of a one-hit wonder...

It's worth stressing that Mary Shelley did not lack a first-rate education. From today's perspective it certainly seems marginal - but women only began to gain entry to British universities in the late C19th - and not in equal numbers until the late 1970s. In the late 18th century, a woman of her social class could hope for a governess, to teach things like language and etiquette. Because education had been so important a cause to her mother, Godwin ensured that she had the best private education he could afford, and this would have been comparable, in academic terms, to that of elite males. That's why at 19 she could hold her own intellectually with Byron and Shelley.

For me, Johnny nailed this debated by pointing out that Victor Frankenstein had been modelled on Percy Shelley. I hadn't realised this - but it fits, especially when you remember that Percy Shelley kept a version of Galvani's apparatus in his rooms at Oxford. As an atheist, Percy Shelley would have been drawn to the idea that life could be created as a natural phenomemon, just as dissected frog legs could be made to kick, and executed men made to sit upright, by the application of electricity. Percy Shelley was the young Victor Frankenstein, about to improve on the historical work of Johann Konrad Dipple/Von Frankenstein at Darmstadt's Castle Frankenstein, by moving beyond primitive alchemy to modern science.

So Frankenstein was modelled on Shelley, just as Polidori's vampire was modelled on Lord Byron! (Polidori's book was published after they fell out, and Byron considered it a slander.) Thanks for that Johnny!

As for independents giving a finger to the man, I wish it were the case - but you seldom meet an academic who doesn't portray themselves in this light - in England if not in the States.

yeah , it's great isn't it ?

hmm...considering who her parents were, i don't really doubt her writing the novel.
still, sounds like a fun read.
the story goes that the four of them, Percy and Mary, Lord Byron and Mary's cousin, sister...Byron's lover, whomever...some other female,...were drinking and carousing and carrying on, and proceeded to tell spooky stories.
mary went to bed...had a horrible nightmare, told them all the story the next day, and then proceeded to write it down.
did percy help her? yeah, maybe...but didn't he take just as much from Byron? yeah, very likely.
all that drugs and sex...it's all so Rock N Roll.
by the by, i'd thought Mary was younger than 19, but i think i may just be thinking of her marriage to Percy.