Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein

Guillermo del Toro, dir. Frankenstein (2025)

In an earlier piece on Mary Shelley, I discussed Brian Aldiss's suggestion that she should be regarded as the founder of the modern genre of Science Fiction. The appearance of this new film by horror maestro Guillermo del Toro offers a chance to reexamine the question from a rather different angle.

What exactly is Frankenstein?

Leslie Klinger, ed. The New Annotated Frankenstein. Introduction by Guillermo del Toro (2017)

Well, on the surface, it's clearly a Gothic novel written in the mode pioneered by William Beckford (Vathek, 1786); Ann Radcliffe (The Mysteries of Udolpho, 1794); Matthew "Monk" Lewis (The Monk, 1796), and many, many others - including Mary Shelley's own husband Percy, who'd published two such romances as a schoolboy: Zastrozzi (1810) and St. Irvyne; or, The Rosicrucian (1811).

But if that were all it is, then Frankenstein would presumably have long since achieved honourable oblivion along with most of the other specimens of the genus: except, of course, for Jane Austen's lively satire Northanger Abbey - written in 1799, but not published (posthumously) until 1817.

Guillermo del Toro's own work is (according to Wikipedia):

characterized by a strong connection to fairy tales, gothicism and horror, often blending the genres, with an effort to infuse visual or poetic beauty in the grotesque.

That list of influences - fairy tales, gothicism and horror - is certainly vital when it comes to defining his approach to Frankenstein.

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Anon.: Frontispiece to Frankenstein (1831)

As far as Horror goes, Shelley's monster certainly has a far worse temper than del Toro's. He kills Victor Frankenstein's young brother William, his friend Henry Clerval, and Victor's bride Elizabeth Lavenza on their wedding night. Worse than that, he contrives to frame a faithful family servant for the murder of little William. Despite his suspicions, Victor doesn't try to prevent her execution for the crime.

Jacob Elordi as the Creature

Del Toro's monster, by contrast, is a gentle pastoralist and an innocent victim of circumstances. He's constantly being blamed for murders he didn't commit, and even when Victor tries to kill him with a pistol - and instead ends up shooting his brother's bride in the stomach - Victor still manages to read this as somehow the monster's fault.

There's an inordinate amount of shooting in del Toro's film, in fact. Hunters, villagers, sailors - all seem to have loaded muskets ready to fire at the drop of a hat. Shelley herself is more sparing with the special effects, so the one significant exception - when the monster is shot by the father of a young girl he's just saved from drowning - has far more resonance.

Guillermo del Toro, dir.: Frankenstein (2025)

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Ken Russell, dir. Gothic (1986)

When it comes to Gothic, it's important to remember that despite our associations with clanking chains and gloomy old castles, it's a far more varied genre than one might have expected.

Yes, it's a repository for dream imagery and extreme emotions: the repressed unconscious of the Age of Reason. But it's also associated with hidden knowledge and forbidden lore. One of Percy Shelley's novellas was about a Rosicrucian. Mary Shelley's own introduction to the 1831 revised edition of her novel (the first to include her name as its author) sums up perfectly the fusion of these ideas:

I saw - with shut eyes, but acute mental vision - I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half vital motion. Frightful must it be; for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavour to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world.

It's phrases such as "unhallowed arts" and "mocking the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world" which stand out here, rather than the scientific trappings with which she also adorns her story: for instance, "the experiments of Dr. Darwin, ... who preserved a piece of vermicelli in a glass case, till by some extraordinary means it began to move with voluntary motion."

Perhaps a corpse would be re-animated; galvanism had given token of such things: perhaps the component parts of a creature might be manufactured, brought together, and endued with vital warmth.

It's worth noting that the word "scientist" was not yet in common use. "Natural Philosopher" was the only description readily to hand. Mary herself appears to prefer the term "artist":

His success would terrify the artist; he would rush away from his odious handywork, horror-stricken. He would hope that, left to itself, the slight spark of life which he had communicated would fade; that this thing, which had received such imperfect animation, would subside into dead matter; and he might sleep in the belief that the silence of the grave would quench for ever the transient existence of the hideous corpse which he had looked upon as the cradle of life. He sleeps; but he is awakened; he opens his eyes; behold the horrid thing stands at his bedside, opening his curtains, and looking on him with yellow, watery, but speculative eyes.

Brrr! That Mary Shelley certainly could write. I love that description of the thing's "yellow, watery, but speculative eyes" ... Not only was her story conceived in a dream, but her intention here - and in other passages - seems to be to recall the atmosphere of a nightmare.

Henry Fuseli: The Nightmare (1790=-91)

So don't be too misled by the affectionate parody behind Jane Austen's famous list of "horrid novels" in chapter six of Northanger Abbey:

"... Castle of Wolfenbach, Clermont, Mysterious Warnings, Necromancer of the Black Forest, Midnight Bell, Orphan of the Rhine, and Horrid Mysteries. Those will last us some time.”
“Yes, pretty well; but are they all horrid, are you sure they are all horrid?”

Not only are they "horrid", but they're also quite real. The Folio Society published a box-set of all seven in 1968, and followed it up a few years later with an edition of Ann Radcliffe's six novels in the same vein.

The Northanger Set of the Seven Horrid Novels (1968)

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Richard Dadd: The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke (1855-64)

Which brings us to fairy tales. There was a time when this term would have led us to visualise dew-sipping flower-fairies with diaphanous wings - the Cottingley Fairy photographs, for instance, along with the literature which inspired them.

Ever since the appearance of J. R. R. Tolkien's influential essay "On Fairy-stories" in 1947, however - reprinted in Tree and Leaf in 1964 - the concept of Faerie as a destination, rather than simply a species of diminutive, supernatural creatures, has transformed our approach to the subject.

J. R. R. Tolkien: On Fairy-stories (2008)

The statement in Wikipedia's Guillermo del Toro article that:

He has had a lifelong fascination with monsters, which he considers symbols of great power

applies, then, just as much to his interest in fairy-stories as it does to his taste for Gothic horror.

Fairy-stories, after all (whether traditional or literary) generally embody some kind of quest, and thus have a tendency to reenact Vladimir Propp's classic breakdown of the narrative structure of a folktale:

Vladimir Propp: The Functions of Folktales (1928)

Frankenstein's Monster is far from a conventional Fairy-tale hero, but he certainly has his avatars in the folktale tradition. He's a kind of holy innocent (or, if you prefer, Rousseau-istic noble savage). Both Boris Karloff (in James Whale's classic Frankenstein of 1931) and Jacob Elordi (in del Toro's film) play him as a creature whose innate good nature is gradually corrupted by the brutality and suspicion which surround him - not to mention Victor's primal act of abandonment of his own, self-created child.

James Whale, dir.: Frankenstein (1931)

Guillermo del Toro, dir.: Frankenstein (2025)

It's this aspect of the monster which transforms Mary Shelley's gothic novel into a more potent myth of despair and redemption. Anticipating Stevenson's Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by almost a century, she reverses the positions of Monster and Creator. It's Victor who's the real monster, in virtually every version of the story.

Víctor Erice, dir.: The Spirit of the Beehive (1973)

It's for this reason that, in Víctor Erice's Spanish Civil War film El espíritu de la colmena [Spirit of the Beehive] - a masterpiece which del Toro constantly references in his own work (either directly, as in Pan's Labyrinth, or indirectly, as in the elven scenes of The Golden Army) - it's the Spirit embodied in Frankenstein's Monster who inspires the little girl to try to help a wounded Republican soldier.

Another avatar exerting a strong influence over del Toro's film is David Lynch's Elephant Man - in particular the scene where John Hurt, playing the monster, is cornered in a public lavatory by a crowd of angry townies, and quells them with a speech which Jacob Elordi seems, at times, on the verge of uttering in propria persona.

David Lynch, dir.: The Elephant Man (1980)

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Guillermo del Toro, dir. Pan's Labyrinth (2006)

Does all of this help? This labyrinth of references, this visual library of clues, this invocation of the great symbolic performances of the past?

I'm inclined, much against my will, to conclude not. Jacob Elordi's performance as the monster is flawless and intuitive. He stands with any of the other greats who've inhabited the role. The sublime Mia Goth, too, brings an unexpected breath of fresh air to an otherwise emotionally claustrophobic film.

Two faces of Mia Goth

There's so much to admire in Guillermo del Toro's film! And yet it's not, in the end, particularly likeable. It dissolves into a series of amazing set and character designs. Unlike James Whale's twin masterpieces, Frankenstein (1931) and Bride of Frankenstein (1935), del Toro's version lacks the humorous exuberance of his own two almost criminally entrancing Hellboy movies.

And yet I'm sure that I'll watch it again - if only to savour Elordi and Goth at work - and, more importantly, I feel that it's helped to enhance my appreciation of Mary Shelley's genius. That her novel can still be such a source of inspiration two hundred years after it was first written is in itself astonishing.

Under the circumstances, it's hardly surprising that the most potent image left to us by all this plethora of Frankensteins large and small is that of a hastily married, recently bereaved young woman scratching away with a quill-pen in a villa by Lake Geneva, halfway through the notorious year without a summer, 1816.

Emma Jensen: Mary Shelley (2018)

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Guillermo del Toro (2025)

Guillermo del Toro Gómez
(1964- )

Film:

Director & Writer:

1. Doña Lupe [short film] (1985)
2. Geometría [short film] (1987)
3. Cronos (1992)
4. Mimic (1997)
5. El espinazo del diablo [The Devil's Backbone] (2001)
6. Hellboy (2004)
   • Hellboy, dir. & writ. Guillermo del Toro – with Ron Perlman, Selma Blair, Karel Roden, Rupert Evans, Jeffrey Tambor, John Hurt – (USA, 2004)
7. El laberinto del fauno [Pan's Labyrinth] (2006)
   • Pan’s Labyrinth, writ. & dir. Guillermo del Toro – with Sergi López, Maribel Verdú, Ivana Baquero – (Spain / Mexico, 2006)
8. Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008)
   • Hellboy II: The Golden Army, dir. & writ. Guillermo del Toro – with Ron Perlman, Selma Blair, Doug Jones, Jeffrey Tambor, John Hurt – (USA, 2008)
9. Pacific Rim (2013)
10. Crimson Peak (2015)
11. The Shape of Water (2017)
12. Nightmare Alley (2021)
13. [with Mark Gustafson] Pinocchio (2022)
14. Frankenstein (2026)

Director:

15. Blade II (2002)

Writer:

16. Don't Be Afraid of the Dark (2010)
17. [co-written] The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012)
    • The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (Extended DVD Edition), dir. Peter Jackson, writ. Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, Peter Jackson, Guillermo del Toro (based on the novel by J. R. R. Tolkien) – with Ian McKellen, Martin Freeman, Richard Armitage, James Nesbitt, Ken Stott, Sylvester McCoy, Cate Blanchett, Ian Holm, Christopher Lee, Hugo Weaving, Elijah Wood, Andy Serkis – (NZ/USA, 2012)
18. [co-written] The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013)
    • The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (Extended DVD Edition), dir. Peter Jackson, writ. Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, Peter Jackson, Guillermo del Toro (based on the novel by J. R. R. Tolkien) – with Ian McKellen, Martin Freeman, Richard Armitage, James Nesbitt, Ken Stott, Sylvester McCoy, Cate Blanchett, Ian Holm, Christopher Lee, Hugo Weaving, Elijah Wood, Andy Serkis – (NZ/USA, 2013)
19. [co-written] The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (2014)
    • The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (Extended DVD Edition), dir. Peter Jackson, writ. Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, Peter Jackson, Guillermo del Toro (based on the novel by J. R. R. Tolkien) – with Ian McKellen, Martin Freeman, Richard Armitage, James Nesbitt, Ken Stott, Sylvester McCoy, Cate Blanchett, Ian Holm, Christopher Lee, Hugo Weaving, Elijah Wood, Andy Serkis – (NZ/USA, 2014)
20. [story] Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (2019)
21. The Witches (2020)
22. Trollhunters: Rise of the Titans (2021)

Producer:

23. Un embrujo (1998)
24. Crónicas (2004)
25. Insignificant Things (2008)
26. Rudo y Cursi (2008)
27. Rabia (2009)
28. Julia's Eyes (2010)
29. The Book of Life (2014)
30. Pacific Rim Uprising (2018)
31. Antlers (2021)
32. The Boy in the Iron Box (TBA)

Executive producer:

33. Dona Herlinda and Her Son (1985)
34. The Orphanage (2007)
35. While She Was Out (2008)
36. Splice (2009)
37. Puss in Boots (2011)
38. The Captured Bird [short film] (2012)
39. Rise of the Guardians (2012)
40. Mama (2013)
41. Kung Fu Panda 3 (2016)

Television:


42. La hora marcada (1986–1989)

    Wrote & directed episodes "Hamburguesas", "Caminos de ayer", "Con todo para llevar" & "Invasión"; directed "Les gourmets"

43. The Simpsons (2013)

    Opening sequence of episode "Treehouse of Horror XXIV"

44. The Strain (2014–2017)

    Wrote & directed episode "Night Zero"; directed prologue of episode "BK, NY"; directed Luchador sequence in episode "The Silver Angel"

45. Trollhunters: Tales of Arcadia (2016–2018)

    Wrote & directed episodes "Becoming: Part 1 & 2"; directed episodes "The Eternal Knight: Part 1 & 2"

46. 3Below: Tales of Arcadia (2018–2019)

    Wrote & directed episodes "Terra Incognita: Part 1 & 2"

47. Carnival Row (2019)

    Original story

48. Wizards: Tales of Arcadia (2020)

    Wrote episodes "Spellbound" & "History in the Making"

49. Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities (2022)

    Showrunner; wrote episode "Lot 36"; wrote story of episode "The Murmuring"


Video games:


50. [writer & voiceover director] Hellboy: The Science of Evil (2008)
51. [director] P.T. (2014)
52. [character likeness]] Death Stranding (2019)
53. [writer & producer] Trollhunters: Defenders of Arcadia (2020)
54. [character likeness] Death Stranding 2: On the Beach (2025)

Books:


55. Alfred Hitchcock (1990)
56. La invención de Cronos (1992)
57. Hellboy: The Golden Army Comic (2008)
58. Hellboy II: The Art of the Movie (2008)
59. The Monsters of Hellboy II (2008)
60. The Strain [novel] (2009)
61. The Fall [novel] (2010)
62. Don't Be Afraid of the Dark: Blackwood's Guide to Dangerous Fairies (2011)
63. The Night Eternal [novel] (2011)
64. Cabinet of Curiosities: My Notebooks, Collections, and Other Obsessions (2013)
    • Cabinet of Curiosities: My Notebooks, Collections, and Other Obsessions. Ed. Marc Scott Zicree. Foreword by James Cameron. Contributions by Tom Cruise, Alfonso Cuaron, Cornelia Funke, Neil Gaiman, John Landis, Mike Mignola, Ron Perlman & Adam Savage. An Insight Editions Book. Harper Design. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2013.
65. [with Daniel Kraus] Trollhunters (2015)
66. The Shape of Water (2018)
67. At Home With Monsters (2019)
68. Pan's Labyrinth: The Labyrinth of the Faun (2019)
69. The Hollow Ones (2020)
70. The Boy in the Iron Box Series (2024)

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Josef Astor: Guillermo del Toro's Movie Monsters (2011)

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SF Luminaries: Mary Shelley

Richard Rothwell: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1840)

"I write bad articles which help to make me miserable — but I am going to plunge into a novel and hope that its clear water will wash off the mud of the magazines."

- Mary Shelley, Letter to Leigh Hunt

Theodor von Holst: Frontispiece to Frankenstein (1831)

There's a section in an 2016 post of mine entitled "Movies about Writers" which includes some remarks on a subgenre I've called "Byron-'n'-Shelley-'n'-Mary-Shelley" films: ones which concentrate on the infamous "haunted summer" of 1816, which she and her husband Percy spent mostly on the shores of Lake Geneva, hob-nobbing with Lord Byron and his hapless companion Dr. Polidori.

Kenneth Branagh, dir.: Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994)

This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to charting the influence of that rather disturbing meeting of minds on popular culture: fiction as well as cinema. I mentioned there Brian Aldiss's SF novel Frankenstein Unbound (1973), Liz Lochead's Dreaming Frankenstein (1984), and Tim Powers' The Stress of Her Regard (1989). (I might also have added Christopher Priest's The Prestige (1995) - though this is far more notable in the novel than in Christopher Nolan's 2006 film version).

Michael Sims: Frankenstein Dreams: A Connoisseur’s Collection of Victorian Science Fiction (2017)

There's also (now) Peter Ackroyd's The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein (2009) to be considered, along with Stephanie Hemphill's Hideous Love (2013) and Jon Skovron's Man Made Boy (2015). Michael Sims, editor of Frankenstein Dreams: A Connoisseur’s Collection of Victorian Science Fiction (2017), mentions these and various other titles in his own 2018 article "8 Books that wouldn't exist without Mary Shelley's Frankenstein".

Leslie S. Klinger, ed.: The New Annotated Frankenstein (2017)

When it comes to movies and TV shows based on the book, it's hard to know exactly where to begin. There's a reasonably complete filmography in Leslie S. Klinger's New Annotated Frankenstein, which takes you all the way from James Whale's classic Frankenstein (1931) and its sequel Bride of Frankenstein (1935) to that curious film Gods and Monsters (1998), which purports to recreate Whale's own last days.

The Frankenstein Chronicles (2015-17)

On the small screen, as well as two series of the UK TV series The Frankenstein Chronicles, there have been three series of that strange amalgam of Dracula, Frankenstein, and The Portrait of Dorian Gray, John Logan's Penny Dreadful ...

Penny Dreadful (2014-16)

All of which brings us to the crucial question: what exactly is Frankenstein? I don't mean that perennial confusion about who the title actually refers to: Victor Frankenstein or Frankenstein's monster (the former, of course). I mean, what kind of a book is it?

Peter Fairclough, ed. Three Gothic Novels (1983)

Mario Praz, author of The Romantic Agony (1933), who contributed an introduction to the edition above, is in no doubt. It's a Gothic novel, and offers all of the seductive attributes of that genre. As the article on Gothic fiction on Wikipedia so succinctly puts it:

Gothic fiction tends to place emphasis on both emotion and a pleasurable kind of terror, serving as an extension of the Romantic literary movement ... The most common of these "pleasures" among Gothic readers was the sublime — an indescribable feeling that "takes us beyond ourselves."

"The genre had much success in the 19th century," the article goes on to say, "as witnessed in prose by Mary Shelley's Frankenstein [my emphasis] and the works of E. T. A. Hoffmann and Edgar Allan Poe ... and in poetry in the work of Samuel Taylor Coleridge."

The Collected Supernatural and Weird Fiction of Mary Shelley, Vol 1 (2010)

The collection above leaves no doubt what area of the literary firmament they see Mary Shelley as inhabiting: the supernatural and weird.

The Collected Supernatural and Weird Fiction of Mary Shelley, Vol 2 (2010)

But there is, of course, a dissentient vein of opinion on this point. It's hard to say who really started this particular hare, but it's certainly strongly associated with Brian Aldiss, a prolific SF author in his own right, and author of the 1973 history of the genre Billion Year Spree (updated in 1986 as Trillion Year Spree). In a speech made at the launch of a new edition of Frankenstein in 2008, he summarised his views as follows:

Brian Aldiss Billion Year Spree (1973)

... when I was attempting to write [Billion Year Spree], I had to begin at the beginning – as one does. At the same time, there were a lot of people who were very eager to find out who was the ‘Father’ of science fiction, and I was very happy to proclaim that Mary Shelley was the Mother of Science Fiction. It caused a lot of bad blood at the time, but happily it’s been spilt and mopped up now.

... In making this claim, which I took care to buttress with examples, I wanted not only to retrieve the book to current attention in a way that my readers might at first resent but would ultimately profit from, but also to retrieve it from the hands of Universal Studios’ horrific Boris Karloff, because I saw that it was so much more than a horror tale. It had mythic quality ...

The fantastical had been in vogue long before Shakespeare. It was eternally in vogue. Aristophanes’ The Birds creates a cloud cuckoo land between earth and heaven ... Then there’s Lucian of Samosata in the first century of our epoch, who describes how the King of the Sun and the King of the Moon go to war over the colonization of – can you guess? – the colonization of Jupiter ...

Christendom was full of angels and lots of fibs about the planets being inhabited. One’s knee deep in these discarded fantasies, but it was Mary Shelley, poised between the Enlightenment and Romanticism, who first wrote of life – that vital spark – being created not by divine intervention as hitherto, but by scientific means; by hard work and by research.

That was new, and in a sense it remains new. The difference is impressive, persuasive, permanent.

Mary Shelley: The Last Man (1826)

In a sense the whole argument comes down to The Last Man. This dystopian futuristic fantasy is the only other significant exhibit to consider when attempting to decide whether to weight the scales towards "Gothic novelist" or "Mother of Science Fiction" for Mary Shelley. Brian Aldiss, once again, is in no doubt:

As if to prove this unsuspected truth in the same way that a scientist doesn’t announce his discovery until he can repeat it, Mary later wrote another futurist novel, The Last Man.

... [In it] we are asked, for instance: “What are we, the inhabitants of this globe, least amongst the many people that inhabit infinite space? Our minds embrace infinity. The visible mechanism of our being is subject to merest accident.”

None of the rest of her seven novels shows any particular elements of speculative fiction: most of them are historical in inspiration, and the others (such as Mathilda, unpublished in her lifetime) tend to be more preoccupied with the complexities of sexual politics.

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)

Jules Verne (1828-1905)

H. G. Wells (1866-1946)

Hugo Gernsback (1884-1967)

Science Fiction has certainly been gifted with quite a number of fathers: Edgar Allan Poe, Jules Verne, H. G. Wells, and Hugo Gernsback, to name just the usual suspects. I suppose that I would feel happier to embrace Brian Aldiss's hypothesis if it weren't for the hyper-Gothic tone of Frankenstein in both the 1818 and 1831 versions.

H. G. Wells: The Island of Dr Moreau (1896)

But then, the same could be said of Wells's Island of Doctor Moreau, or - for that matter - almost all of Poe's fictional output.

It it were just a matter of Frankenstein itself, I think I might still see it as a bit exaggerated - but The Last Man, direct ancestor of such novels as Richard Matheson's I am Legend (1954), George R. Stewart's Earth Abides (1949), Susan Ertz's Woman Alive (1935), and M. P. Shiel's The Purple Cloud (1901), does lend potent support to Aldiss's argument.

John Martin: The Last Man (1849)

Admittedly John Clute's magisterial Encyclopedia of Science Fiction complicates the issue somewhat by describing the complex backstory of the idea:

Early treatments, often in verse, include Jean-Baptiste Cousin de Grainville's The Last Man: or, Omegarus and Syderia: A Romance in Futurity (1805; trans 1806); Lord Byron's "Darkness" (1816); "The Last Man" (1823), a poem by Thomas Campbell (1777-1844) which inspired John Martin's mezzotint "The Last Man" (1826); The Last Man (1826), an operatic scena by William H Callcott (1807-1882); "The Last Man" (1826), a poem by Thomas Hood (1799-1845) ...

All of these before even mentioning Mary Shelley's novel!

One thing's for certain, Frankenstein seems fated to remain one of those very few works of fiction which transcends the genre it was written in, which taps into some mythic layer of the collective unconscious. Dracula, Sherlock Holmes, Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - they keep on being revised, revisited, reinvented in a constant cycle of desire. Whatever their authors envisaged for them, it's impossible they could have foreseen such a relentless need for this among all the other products of their pen.

Mary Shelley was undoubtedly a genius. Even given her extraordinary background: daughter of two brilliant and intellectually revolutionary parents, William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft; married to another genius, Percy Bysshe Shelley; no-one could really have predicted the heights of renown she would reach.

If SF has to have a single ancestor, why shouldn't it be Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley? The extent of her influence on the genre then and now certainly makes her well worthy of the honour.

Leonard Wolf, ed.: The Annotated Frankenstein (1977)

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Reginald Easton: Mary Shelley (1857)

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
(1797-1851)

Novels:


1. Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus. 3 vols. London: Printed for Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor, & Jones, 1818.
   • Three Gothic Novels: The Castle of Otranto, by Horace Walpole; Vathek, by William Beckford; Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley. 1764, 1786, & 1818. Ed. Peter Fairclough. Introduction by Mario Praz. 1968. Penguin English Library. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970.
   • The Annotated Frankenstein. 1818. Ed. Leonard Wolf. Art by Marcia Huyette. New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1977.
   • The New Annotated Frankenstein: Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. 1818. Rev. ed. 1831. Ed. Leslie S. Klinger. Introduction by Guillermo del Toro. Afterword by Anne K. Mellor. Liveright Publishing Corporation. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. Inc., 2017.
   • Making Humans: Mary Shelley, Frankenstein / H. G. Wells, The Island of Doctor Moreau: Complete Texts with Introduction. Historical Contexts. Critical Essays. 1818 & 1896. Ed. Judith Wilt. New Riverside Editions. Ed. Alan Richardson. Boston & New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2003.
2. Valperga: Or, the Life and Adventures of Castruccio, Prince of Lucca. 3 vols. London: Printed for G. and W. B. Whittaker, 1823.
3. The Last Man. 3 vols. London: Henry Colburn, 1826.
   • The Last Man. 1826. Introduction by Brian Aldiss. Hogarth Fiction. London: the Hogarth Press, 1985.
4. The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck, A Romance. 3 vols. London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, 1830.
5. Lodore. 3 vols. London: Richard Bentley, 1835.
6. Falkner. A Novel. 3 vols. London: Saunders and Otley, 1837.
7. Mathilda. 1819. Ed. Elizabeth Nitchie. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1959.

Travel narratives:


8. [with Percy Bysshe Shelley] History of a Six Weeks' Tour through a Part of France, Switzerland, Germany, and Holland: with Letters Descriptive of a Sail round the Lake of Geneva, and of the Glaciers of Chamouni. London: T. Hookham, Jun.; and C. and J. Ollier, 1817.
9. Rambles in Germany and Italy, in 1840, 1842, and 1843. 2 vols. London: Edward Moxon, 1844.

Children's books:


10. [with Percy Bysshe Shelley] Proserpine & Midas. Two unpublished Mythological Dramas by Mary Shelley. 1820. Ed. A. H. Koszul. London: Humphrey Milford, 1922.
11. Maurice, or The Fisher’s Cot. 1820. Ed. Claire Tomalin. 1998. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1999.

Journals & Letters:


12. The Journals of Mary Shelley, 1814–44. Ed. Paula R. Feldman and Diana Scott-Kilvert. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995.
13. The Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. 3 vols. Ed. Betty T. Bennett. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980.

Secondary:


14. Holmes, Richard. Shelley: The Pursuit. 1974. London: Quartet Books, 1976.
15. St Clair, William. The Godwins and the Shelleys: The Biography of a Family. 1989. London: Faber, 1990.
16. Trelawny, Edward John. Records of Shelley, Byron, and the Author. 1878. Ed. David Wright. 1973. Penguin English Library. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1982.

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Mary Shelley: Frankenstein (1818)