Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley (1797-1851) was the child of the political philosopher William Godwin and the feminist author Mary Wollstonecraft. She never knew her mother, who died within a month of her birth. Reared and given a wide, liberal education by Godwin, she began an affair with the married poet Percy Bysshe Shelley in 1814. A complicated romantic and peripatetic life ensued, but she and the poet married in late 1816 after the death of their first child and the suicide of his first wife. She had three more children with him, only one of whom survived to adulthood.
Her association with Shelley brought her into close contact with many more members of the Romantic literary circle, including Lord Byron. It was Byron who proposed the story-writing challenge during the summer of 1816 that provided the inspiration for Frankenstein. Percy Shelley provided encouragement for her writing, but he too died early, drowning in a storm at sea in 1822. After her husband’s death Mary Shelley oversaw several editions of his poetry, but her own literary output continued as well. Her other works include travel journals and novels in a variety of genres. Critics continue to debate the degree to which her later writings represent a distancing from, or a continued engagement with, the radical and Romantic-Era themes of her youth. She died at age 53 after a number of years of ill health.
This exhibit explores the scientific and literary environment in which Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus was first conceived and written. An enduring classic, her story of scientific ambition and creation gone awry has spawned endless creatures of its own, from a theatrical version that opened within a few years of the novel’s first publication in 1818 to more than 30 films, the latest of which was just released in December 2015.
The essential – and sensational – struggle between Victor Frankenstein and his “unnatural” Creature remains at the core of most of these adaptations. But less familiar are many of the era-specific debates and opportunities that inform Frankenstein’s experiment and his Creature’s development, as Shelley first imagined them. Begun during a story-writing challenge among friends in the summer of 1816, and revised several times during Shelley’s lifetime, her Frankenstein reflects contemporary, intertwined developments in the natural sciences and in literary views of the natural world. Such issues not only help drive the story but suggest important connections among the novel’s primary characters.
The materials in this exhibit generally date from the late-18th century, the time period during which Frankenstein is set, through the mid-19th century, when Mary Shelley died. Written from the heart of the Romantic Era, the novel is also both strongly influenced by scientific work that had gone before and indicative of what might follow. For Union College this time period was also formative. Many of the items in this exhibit were part of the “First Purchase” of books and scientific instruments acquired upon the founding of the College in 1795. Others were acquired or annotated later by students eagerly engaged with the same kinds of texts, events, and ideas that inspired Mary Shelley.
Welcome to The World of Frankenstein.