The story of  Frankenstein is a beautiful narrative about ambition and tragedy, written by Mary Shelley and published January 1st, 1818. Frankenstein tells the story of a young scientist who creates a sentient creature from a string of intense scientific revolutions. The creature, rejected by society, grapples with his own existence and purpose while seeking revenge against his creator, Victor Frankenstein. The characters in the story endure vivid emotions as the catastrophe of  unrestrained ambition unfolds. The tale explores themes of relentless pursuit, the consequences of playing God, and the nature of humanity. I found myself transformed by Shelley’s writing, the artistically curated sentences and powerful words, constantly reminding me that she was a young girl when she fabricated the horror story. By digitally analyzing two editions – the 1831 second edition, animated with a new introduction, and the very original, handwritten and revised in Shelley’s own handwriting- we gain perspective into the life of the very gifted Mary Shelley. 

Frankenstein’s Origin – Accentuated by HathiTrust

           Thirteen years after Frankenstein’s release, Mary Shelley released a second edition of the story, this one revised, corrected, and illustrated with a new introduction. Digital scans of the 1831 edition have been made available by HathiTrust, a digital library founded on the principle of collaboration and curiosity. Shelley starts the 1831 edition with a new introduction, requested by the Publishers of the Standard Novels, answering society’s most frequently asked question –

“How I, then a young girl, came to think of, and to dilate upon, so very hideous an idea?” (Shelley, Introduction IV) 

          She begins to answer the question by relating back to her childhood. Being the daughter of two literary celebrities, Mary  expressed a natural passion for writing at a young age. Her residence on the Northern  coast of  the Tay is where Shelley did most of her writing. 

“It was beneath the trees of the grounds belonging to our house, or on the bleak sides of the woodless mountains near, that my true compositions, the airy flights of my imagination, were born and fostered.”  (Shelley, Introduction IV) 

 

 

                  It was the summer of 1816 in which Mary and her husband, Percy Shelley, became neighbors with the prominent writer Lord Byron. It was a wet and rainy summer which often contained the writers inside the cabin, with volumes of German ghost stories to keep them occupied. Lord Byron proposed the idea of writing their own ghost stories, and after days of, as modern day would describe, “writer’s block”, the idea of a ghastly, reanimated creature came to Shelley as she was drifting to sleep. Even Mary herself was horrified of the creature she had procured in her imagination

“ ‘I have found it!’ What terrified me will terrify others; and I need only describe the specter which haunted my midnight pillow.” (Introduction IV)

               I used the platform Hathitrust to view the introduction. Hathitrust is a collaborative digital library that was founded in 2008 as a medium to preserve the published record for durable, long-term, and lawful access. The 1831 edition is a two hundred and twenty four page scan that users can seamlessly scroll through. The website has also conveniently sorted each chapter with a hyperlink to the scanned pages. Since the platform is scanned book pages, It feels almost as if  you are reading the book, with the nostalgia of the sort of damp-looking yellow pages that I can smell through the screen. However, using the digital scans proved that there was no embedded text, when trying to select quotes to insert, the computer does not recognize the page as a text, but rather an image. This website would also be considered inaccessible for those who experience any visual impairments, seeing as though a screen reader would not be adaptable to the website. 

                 The added introduction gives readers like myself a new perspective. We learn aspects of Shelley’s personality and even the circumstances in which Frankenstein was written. While reading the introduction, I thought about Mary Shelley, only 17 years old, crafting the works of Frankenstein in a rainy cabin, over 200 years ago. 

The Very Original 

                 The second platform I chose to analyze was Mary’s very own notebook, the story of Frankenstein in the creator’s handwriting. Digital scans of her notebook pages have been made available by The Shelley-Godwin Article. The scans show frantic writing, almost scribble-looking, that I can only imagine possible written at a high speed. This little detail highlights the brilliance of Mary Shelley, the ability to quickly formulate literate and beautiful sentences to form such a profound plot. While reading, I can see an even clearer image of Mary, writing in ink and quill while the rain pours outside and her heartbeat pounds with terror. 

                The digital scans of her pages also shed light on her original ideas, or essentially, what made the cut and what did not. We see whole paragraphs crossed out and little details changed. For example,  In chapter 2 we see that the age that Victor experienced a thunderstorm over Belrive was changed from twelve to fourteen. The attention to detail by Shelley is impressive, how does the age of Victor affect our reading experience? 

               The readers can also appreciate the accessibility of the archive. On the left hand side of the site we see the actual pages, with handwriting, redactions, and annotations. On the left side we get a text version of what each page displays, which is convenient for people like me who could not read Shelley’s script. This also gives readers the option to use screen readers and the copy and paste tool on their computers. 

Conclusion 

               By comparing two different editions of the same novel, Frankenstein, we can further analyze each decision made by the author, and how each idea is carefully articulated to convey a message. We can get a glimpse of the artistic process Shelley experienced, as well as original feedback from other notable authors. In the 1831 edition, Shelley writes a new introduction, this one about herself and the events that led up to Frankenstein’s creation. We get personal insight, for example, when Shelley mentions that even herself was scared of the creature, a figment of her imagination so vivid that the thinker gets scared.