Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is a novel written by the English author Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley telling the story of a young science student Victor Frankenstein, who creates a grotesque but sentient creature in an unorthodox scientific experiment. Shelley started writing the story when she was eighteen years old, and the first edition of the novel was published anonymously in London in 1818, when she was twenty years old. Shelley’s name first appeared on the second edition, published in France in 1823.
Shelley traveled through Europe in 1814, journeying along the Rhine River in Germany with a stop in Gernsheim near Frankenstein Castle, where two centuries before an alchemist was engaged in experiments. Later, she traveled in the region of Geneva (Switzerland), where much of the story takes place and the topic of galvanism and other similar occult ideas were themes of conversation among her companions, particularly her lover and future husband, Percy Shelley. Mary, Percy, Lord Byron, and John Polidorn decided to have a competition to see who could write the best horror story. After thinking for days, Shelley dreamt about a scientist who created life and was horrified by what he had made; her dream later evolved into the novel’s story.
