or, The Modern Prometheus.
Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus.
Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor, & Jones, 1818.
First edition. Three volumes, duodecimo (approx 193 × 115 mm). Finely bound in mid 20th-century brown crushed morocco by Bayntun (Rivière), spine gilt ruled in compartments, sides ruled in gilt with a French fillet, gilt inner dentelles, marbled endpapers, top edge gilt, all others uncut. All half-titles and final advert leaf in vol I. A superb fine, tall copy, internally very fresh showing just a few trivial marks and fore and lower edges uncut throughout.
Mary Shelley's masterpiece of Gothic horror and early polemic against the hubris of modern science. Published when Mary Shelley was only nineteen, Frankenstein is not the only memorable remnant of that cold summer at the Villa Diodati (Polidori's The Vampyre has the same origin), but it is certainly the most famous. Frankenstein effortlessly transcends the typical Gothic novel: ruined castles, graveyards and charnel houses appear only briefly or in the distance, and diabolical agency is replaced by human, natural and scientific powers. And unlike most Gothic novels Frankenstein is modern rather than mock-medieval: Mary Shelley managed to reconcile the Prometheus theme, then occupying both her husband Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron, with the most up-to-date scientific preoccupations, anticipating many of the themes of science fiction. Her husband's editorial hand has been noted in various places, particularly in the unsigned preface describing the circumstances of its origin and in the plangent cadences of the closing paragraph.
Stock ID: 26541
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