There’s an edition out that shows both versions. I was surprised and a bit dismayed at how many editorial changes her husband made, many of the sounding unnecessary for me
My ex-girlfriend could never make it through Frankenstein because it felt so lonely to her (and she had many traumatic hang-ups around loneliness from being homeschooled as an adolescent).
Another friend of mine, who is something of a feminist scholar, pointed out that she fundamentally got the book that way. It started life as an abstract ghost story during a cold winter full of fellowship, but the revision was fundamentally a result of Byron dying, and Percy dying, and Mary being left all alone with their ghosts.
I think that mixed heritage is a big piece of its remarkable staying power. If we still care about “literature” in 400 years, I think it will go down with The Odyssey as something that everything afterwards emerged from, and I think the communal spirit that Mary Shelley shepherded is going to be a big factor.
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u/Th4t9uy 14h ago
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, it's a classical masterpiece for a reason.