Mary Shelley, 1820

T.P. Cooke as Frankenstein's monster in first stage production of Frankenstein in London, 1823

Topics on the Page

Biography of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Frankenstein: or the Modern Prometheus

Multimedia Resources

Teaching Resources

Cloning

The Search for the Northwest Passage

Biography Resources

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797-1851)

See also, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley from Brandeis University

Mary Shelley 213th Birthday Google Doodle, August 30, 2010

She finished writing the novel "Frankenstein" when she was 19 years-old.

Her mother was Mary Wollstonecraft, an early women's rights advocate who died days after her birth.

She married the poet Percy Shelley. Their love affair is depicted in a 2017 movie, "A Storm in the Stars", in which she was played by the Hollywood actress Elle Fanning

• View the Film Trailer

Editions of Frankenstein

 Frankenstein: or the Modern Prometheus

• Published March 11, 1818
• First Science Fiction Novel
• Popular symbol of feminist literature

Read the text of novel online

Hear the novel read aloud on Librivox

The Shelley-Goodwin Archive: Frankenstein

• Shows the drafting process for the novel and the collaborative writing process of the Shelley family
• Has pictures of primary source documents and typed text to translate handwriting

Multimedia Resources

Poster from the 1931 film Frankenstein 

It's Alive: 1931 Frankenstein Movie Clip staring Boris Karloff

Frankenstein on the Silver Screen has still images from the movies

 Did Climate Inspire the Birth of a Monster? NPR, August 13, 2007. 

• This podcast explored how weather, namely the Mount Tambora volcano eruption in Indonesia created the dark and stormy atmosphere depicted in the novel.

PHI Hartman Frankenstein Sketches from Saturday Night Live

Teaching Resources

Google Lit Trips - Frankenstein

Teaching Frankenstein with The New York Times


Maybe Frankenstein Really IS the Monster, Chicago Humanities Festival


A Teacher's Guide to Frankenstein from Penguin Books

Cloning

Human Genome Project logo

Can Mary Shelley's Frankenstein Be Read as an Early Research Ethics Text? Medical Humanities, 2004

The Hubris of Dr. Frankenstein and Reproductive Cloning, Albany Medical College

Cloning Fact Sheet, from National Human Genome Research Institute

Will Cloning Ever Save Endangered Animals? Scientific American (March 11, 2013)

The Search for the Northwest Passage

Frankenstein opens with a ship trapped in the Arctic ice, lost on its search for the Northwest Passage.

A Northwest Passage Journey Finds Little Ice and Big Changes (2019)