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University of Dundee Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein Shelley, Mary; Cook, Daniel; Morris, James ; Murray, Christopher; Kay, Billy; Vaughan, Phillip DOI: 10.20933/100001118 Publication date: 2018 Licence: CC BY-NC-ND Document Version Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record Link to publication in Discovery Research Portal Citation for published version (APA): Shelley, M., Cook, D. (Ed.), Morris, J., Murray, C., Kay, B., & Vaughan, P. (2018). Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein: The Dundee Edition. 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Sep. 2021 On New Year's Day, 1818, Mary Shelley unleashed on the world one of the most iconic works of fiction ever written: Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. Her story begins further back than that. Ensconced in the Villa Diodati by Lake Geneva during the so-called Year Without a Summer, 1816, the teenage author experienced a feverish dream. The tragic tale of the God-like scientist and his sentient Creature was born. Shelley completed her draft by the spring of 1817, and it finally appeared in print, anonymously, a few months later. But our story goes back further still. Between 1812 and 1814, Shelley (then known as Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin) spent many months in the home of the Baxter family near the banks of the River Tay in Scotland. As she later reported in the 1831 Introduction to Frankenstein, Shelley's eerie imagination first took flight here in the industrial city of Dundee. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was an English writer whose novels include Frankenstein (1818), Va/perga (1823), The Last Man (1826), Ladore (1835), and Falkner (1837). Daniel Cook is a Senior Lecturer in English at the University th of Dundee. His research and teaching interests focus on 18 - and 19th-century British and Irish literature. James Morris teaches Romantic and Victorian literature at the universities of Dundee and Glasgow. His research chiefly focuses on the 19th-century novel and empire. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein The Dundee Edition Edited by Daniel Cook Notes by James Morris Foreword by Billy Kay Afterword by Chris Murray Universe University of Dundee, Nethergate, Dundee, DDl 4HN Printed in Scotland in 2018 Notes © James Morris 2018 Foreword © Billy Kay 2018 Afterword© Chris Murray 2018 Design© Phillip Vaughan 2018 Images© Ian Kennedy, Cam Kennedy, Norrie Millar, Dan McDaid, and Elliot Balson 2018 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Universe, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with appropriate reprographics rights organizations. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the editor, Daniel Cook, at the University of Dundee. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein: The Dundee Edition / edited by Daniel Cook with James Morris 1. English fiction-19th century 2. Gothic Fiction 3. Science Fiction 4. Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft, 1797-1851 Contents List of Illustrations Acknowledgements II Note on the Text Ill Foreword by Billy Kay IV FRANKENSTEIN; OR, THE MODERN PROMETHEUS l Appendices A: Author's Introduction (1831) 182-187 B: Walter Scott on Frankenstein (1818) 188-202 C: John Wilson Croker on Frankenstein (1818) 203-211 D: Percy Bysshe Shelley on Frankenstein (1832) 211-213 E: Percy Bysshe Shelley, 'A Defence of Poetry' (1821) 214 Afterword by Chris Murray 215-221 Further Reading 222-224 List of Illustrations Front Cover Art Ian Kennedy The Creature Cam Kennedy Justine Elliot Balson Reading Paradise Lost Dan McDaid The Woods Norrie Millar The Creature Returns Cam Kennedy The Creature in Pursuit Norrie Millar The End Elliot Balson Back Cover Art Cam Kennedy ii Acknowledgements I wish to thank Dr James Morris, our Dundonian postdoctoral research assistant, for his attentive scholarship in this edition; Billy Kay for his inspiring foreword, and for including us in his BBC documentary Frankenstein Dundee; Cam Kennedy, Ian Kennedy, Norrie Millar, Dan McDaid and Elliot Balson for creating brand new images for this commemorative edition; my colleagues at the University of Dundee, especially Professor Chris Murray (Director, Scottish Centre for Comics Studies), Phillip Vaughan (Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design), Dr Keith Williams (Director, Centre for Critical and Creative Cultures), Matthew Jarron (Museum Services), Dr Murray Frame, and Professor James Livesey (Dean, School of Humanities), as well as my PhD student Lauren Christie; and everyone else who has supported our work in Dundee and beyond. This publication, and our comics Frankenstein Begins and Frankenstein Returns, were first developed during the national Being Human Festival of the Humanities. We therefore wish to thank Sarah Churchwell, Michael Eades, Jo Chard and the whole Being Human team in London, as well as our regional partners (DCA, Dundee Science Centre, Leisure & Culture Dundee, and more). iii Note on the Text This edition is based on the 1818 publication of the novel. There are many reasons for favouring the first edition over the heavily revised 1831 publication. Foremost of these is the fact that the later edition removes many of the text's most ground-breaking elements, including references to radical scientific and philosophical theories. The Dundee Edition is transcribed from a first edition held at the University of Glasgow's Archives. Every effort has been made to present as faithful a reproduction of the first edition as possible. Any obvious typographical errors in the original have been silently corrected, but Shelley's idiosyncratic grammar (the use of apostrophes in possessive pronouns, for instance) has been left in place. Footnotes have been provided by James Morris in order to contextualise Shelley's references and to aid readers largely unaccustomed to pre-1900 fiction. Appendices have been provided to situate the novel in its contemporary context. The Further Reading list offers a small but representative survey of modern critical approaches to the text. The main font used in this edition is Baxter Sans, which is named in honour of the main founder of the University of Dundee, Mary Ann Baxter (1801-1884). The front cover font is Crypt Creep BB font by Blambot.com. iv Foreword I studied English and Scottish literature at the University of Edinburgh in the early 1970s, but the first inkling I had of Mary Shelley's seminal novel having strong Dundee connections came to me when a friend whose family had lived along the Broughty Ferry Road told me that he had played on the Frankenstein Steps as a wee boy! This image of children playing innocently while the iconic creature lurked in the shadows ready to pounce was a potent one that stayed with me, and I wanted to find out more. So when I made radio and television documentaries about the city and edited The Dundee Book around the time of Dundee's 800th Birthday celebrations in 1991, I was delighted to come across Mary Shelley's brilliant description of the role played by Dundee in the genesis of her classic Gothic novel. I loved being able to reprint it in The Dundee Book to remind Dundonians of one of their most famous literary guests. Now, in the making of Frankenstein Dundee, a radio documentary for BBC Radio Scotland, I have delved more deeply into Mary's life and the relationships which influenced her long after she had left Dundee. One that surely deserves more scrutiny is the relationship between Mary Shelley and Fanny Wright, the daughter of a Dundee radical who became one of America's leading feminists and anti-slavery campaigners. As the proto-feminist Mary Wollstonecraft's daughter, Mary Shelley would have found Fanny Wright's radical philosophy inspirational, and I am sure their mutual appreciation was strengthened by their links back to Dundee. Mary obviously felt at home personally, culturally and politically in Scotland. Robert Burns's positive response to her mother's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman was delivered and proclaimed just a few months after Mary Wollstonecraft's publication appeared: V While Europe's eye is fix'd on mighty things, The fate of Empires and the fall of Kings; While quacks of State must each produce his plan, And even children lisp the Rights of Man; Amid this mighty fuss just let me mention, The Rights of Woman merit some attention. ('The Rights of Woman') Mary also loved the works of Sir Walter Scott, and proudly displayed the tartan dress she had made in Dundee when she returned to London. I also believe that the eerie, eldritch, supernatural element she absorbed in Scotland very much informed the birth of Frankenstein. It is surely no coincidence that Bram Stoker imbibed the same atmosphere at Slains Castle in Aberdeenshire before writing Dracula, or that a wee boy called Edgar Allan Poe was haunted by his stay in Irvine at the same time Mary was in Tayside - at the height of the body-snatching epidemic that supplied cadavers for the anatomy classes in Scotland's renowned universities.