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3 October 2008

A special one-day event will celebrate the launch of The Original Frankenstein, the latest Bodleian Library publication. Frankenstein Day at the Bodleian Library will take place on 7 October 2008. Events include: a special display of Mary Shelley's original manuscripts; a lecture by Charles E. Robinson, the author of the new edition and a book launch with Brian Aldiss as guest speaker.

About the book

The Original Frankenstein is a ground-breaking new edition of the first and most popular work of science fiction, allowing Mary Shelley’s pure authorial voice to be heard for the first time since 1817, when the book was initially written. The Bodleian publication uses the unique handwritten draft of 1816-17, held at the Library, to distinguish Mary's own words from the additions written in by her husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley.

For years, scholars have debated the degree to which Percy Shelley influenced his wife’s novel. Until now, no one has been able to read what Mary Shelley herself initially wrote in this original draft of the novel. Going back to the unique draft manuscript of the text held in the Bodleian Library, Charles E. Robinson has identified up to 5,000 edits in Percy Shelley’s hand writing and has teased these out, isolating them from the story in Mary Shelley’s hand. Both texts – with and without Percy’s interventions – are presented in this edition, allowing us for the first time to read the story in Mary’s original hand and also to see how Percy edited his wife’s prose.

The results are fascinating. We read a more rapidly paced novel that is arranged in different chapters. Above all, we hear Mary’s genuine voice which sounds to us more modern, more immediately colloquial than her husband’s learned, more polished style.

To this day, Frankenstein remains the most popular work of science fiction. This edition promises to redefine the ways we read the story and perceive the act of its creation.

Charles E. Robinson is a Professor of English at the University of Delaware. He has published and lectured extensively on the English Romantic writers, especially Byron and the Shelleys.

The Original Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (with Percy Shelley) edited by Charles E. Robinson, 448 pp, Hardback, £14.99, ISBN:  1 85124 396 8 / 978 1 85124 396 9.

The Original Frankenstein can be purchased online at www.bodleianbookshop.co.uk

About the display

The display features the draft notebooks in Mary and Percy’s Shelley’s handwriting and the fair copy written by Mary Shelley for the publisher, the textual source for the three-volume first edition of 1818.  Also on display is a miniature of Mary, an idealized portrait made after her death. The display ends with a lock of Mary's hair, cut in 1816 -- the year of Frankenstein's birth.

The manuscripts of Frankenstein were bought by the Bodleian Library in 2004, with the generous support of the National Heritage Memorial Fund and of other institutional and private donors. They are part of the Abinger Collection, the remaining third of the Shelley family archive: papers of Mary and Percy Bysshe Shelley and of her famous parents, William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft. The Bodleian already owned the other two thirds through gifts from the Shelley family, including the miniature of Mary given by her daughter-in-law in 1894. The Original Frankenstein is part of the Library's continuing campaign to make its riches more accessible for study and enjoyment.