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@frankenstein-assistant
Frankenstein marginalia in the mid-nineteenth century
Image of the day: nineteenth-century shorthand notes written in the margins of the Eaton Collection’s unique 1818 first edition Frankenstein. From the holdings of Special Collections & University Archives, University of California, Riverside.
What are these wild scribbles? Click below...
Tiny Frankenstein
As a follow-up to an ask from @thelibraryofmars, here are a few pictures of an incredibly unique item -- a complete reproduction of Mary Shelley’s novel in a 1/12th scale. It’s so tiny that the camera has trouble focusing on it, but I’m hoping to get some professional pics done soon!
The item was created by famous author, illustrator, & publisher Barbara Raheb, whose amazing work you can see here. Her work is particularly rare and valuable now, as Raheb had to discontinue making her miniature books in 2002, when she started losing her vision.
On loan to the Eaton Collection of Science Fiction and Fantasy at the University of California, Riverside, by generous and brilliant science fiction collector, Dr. Mark C. Glassy.
I love Frankenstein and its legacy so much. I'm very excited I found your blog and can't wait to see what else you put up here!
Hooray! As a way of saying thanks, here’s a picture of an item I’ve nicknamed “Tiny Frankenstein.” Created by famous author, illustrator, & publisher Barbara Raheb, it is COMPLETE reproduction, on 1/12th scale, of Mary Shelley’s novel. I’ll post one pic here and a few more in a non-ask, so I can tag them!
On loan to the Eaton Collection of Science Fiction and Fantasy at the University of California, Riverside, by generous and brilliant science fiction collector, Dr. Mark C. Glassy.
Image of the Day: First edition Frankenstein (1818) in three volumes.
Special Collections and University Archives, from the holdings of the Eaton Collection of Science Fiction and Fantasy, Riverside, CA.
Got a request of something you’d like to see? Here’s the inside of the Eaton Collection’s 1818 first edition Frankenstein, dedicated to @will-write-for-food ;)
Ask for anything, and I’ll go to the stacks & pull it for you!
From the holdings of Special Collections & University Archives, UCR Library, University of California, Riverside.
THIS IS THE BEST BLOG EVER!
Hey! Thanks so much!
Got a question about Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, or 19th century science fiction?
Please submit an ask to the Tumblr I’m putting together for my work as curator of a Frankenstein exhibit! Follow @frankenstein-assistant <3
I’ve read so many rare materials about Frankenstein and would love to share what I’m learning with people!
Wonderful friends, please send asks my way!
TBT that time I came across an original 1831 Frankenstein just tucked away in the amazing collection of Science Fiction Guru, Mark Glassy. (Top image, middle.)
Also -- his sci fi TV collection is amazing.
but did victor frankenstein actually have a phd?
Have you ever noticed that Victor Frankenstein seems ... well ... a bit whiny? You're not alone. Whether you're in a book club, high school class, graduate school seminar, or special collections library, Victor Frankenstein's constant complaining makes it seem like he spends "90% of the novel moping instead of doing literally anything else." [1]
My quick keyboard-shortcut search of Mary Shelley's 1818 text* yields the estimate that, within the novel, variations of the word "wretch" are used over 60 times, and variations of "miserable" or "misery" occur over 100 times. Often, these words are used to describe Victor himself, as he bemoans, and bemoans, and bemoans the misfortune of ... having accomplished exactly what he was trying to.
An excellent Tumblr post has joked that this is because, contrary to popular film depictions, "Doctor" Frankenstein "WAS AN UNDERGRAD" [capitalization retained from original] who "...had no degree at all, he was at college for like, a year." One Tumblr user comedically calls Victor a "19-year-old sin machine," and another suggests that to recontextualize how we might view Victor today, we should: "Imagine hearing about the dudebro living next to u [sic] in the dorms: 'yah Dave dropped out cuz he built a [...] person.'" [2]
Above: "Yah, Dave dropped out cuz he built a person." In the frontispiece of the 1831 edition of Mary Shelley's novel, 19-year-old sin machine Victor Frankenstein flees the scene of his monstrous act of creation.
Hilarious and valid as these arguments may be, which attribute Victor's moping to his age, immaturity, and hubris, Mary Shelley herself seems to have intended for Victor Frankenstein to be as overtly whiny as he is. In her introduction to the 1831 edition of her novel, she explains her inspiration behind Victor and his Creature:
My imagination, unbidden, possessed and guided me, gifting the successive images that arose in my mind with a vividness far beyond the usual bounds of reverie. I saw -- with shut eyes, but acute mental vision, -- I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half vital motion. Frightful must it be; for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavor to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world. His success would terrify the artist; he would rush away from his odious handywork, horror-stricken. He would hope that, left to itself, the slight spark of life which he had communicated would fade; that this thing, which had received such imperfect animation, would subside into dead matter; and he might sleep in the belief that the silence of the grave would quench for ever the transient existence of the hideous corpse which he had looked upon as the cradle of life. He sleeps; but he is awakened; he opens his eyes; behold the horrid thing stands at the bedside, opening his curtains, and looking on him with yellow, watery, but speculative eyes. [3]
True to her inspiration, Shelley's fiction brings this imaginary scene to life on the printed page, using intensely emotional language to craft the story's miserable tone and characterize the voice of our wretched Victor.[4] The Creature haunts Victor's every sleeping and waking thought, as he always stands at his Creator's literal and metaphorical bedside, wide eyes "following" the guilty undergrad, no matter how far he flees.
Moreover, in a future post for this blog, I’ll also connect Victor’s transition from “made-a-bad-choice” (1818 edition) to “was-always-Destined-for-Doom” (1831 edition) with Mary Shelley’s own growing fatalism due to the losses in her personal life. Anne K. Mellor presents this argument articulately in her book, Mary Shelley: Her Life, Her Fictioon, Her Monsters -- and, if you can’t wait, you can listen to my English 20C lecture on this topic at UC Riverside here.
Lastly, as a jokey, all-in-good-fun addition to UCR’s FrankenBlog, I have created the Twitter account @whinypantsfrank, which places images of the "whiniest" passages from Mary Shelley's original novel alongside Tweets that use social-media-style punctuation and capitalization conventions to emphasize Victor's misery.
Click “keep reading” for sources & footnotes.
When you read Frankenstein -- was it in high school? college? on your own? Did you use a Norton Critical edition of the book, or a Penguin Classic?
If you can't remember what your book looked like, think back to the plot. Was Victor Frankenstein's love interest Elizabeth his cousin, or was she a problematically-adopted orphan? Did Victor Frankenstein seem pretty level-headed, or did he whine incessantly about Destiny with a capital "D"? These questions can help you identify if you've read Mary Shelley's original 1818 text, or, her later edited and re-released edition in 1831.
Though the changes may not be as bad as George Lucas's 2000 additions to Star Wars, they are significant, and fascinating when put in conversation with Mary Shelley's biography and the larger literary culture surrounding her famous book. In this lecture for the UCR FrankenBlog, I tell all in "A Tale of Two Frankensteins."
M. Shelley Enthusiasts of Tumblr!
OMG, wonderful humans. I have been offered an opportunity to curate a special museum exhibit on FRANKENSTEIN! This will involve getting to see lots and lots of amazing nineteenth century material, talking to collectors and scholars, and … spearheading a digital exhibit / social media element!
The idea is that because I have been so insistent that our special collection make a Tumblr (come on, wouldn’t you guys love to see sexy book pics of rare science fiction and fantasy material!?) we can try out driving traffic to our actual collection through digital means.
This will probably start happening in the next month or so. More deets to come. But if you are interested in following this Frankenblog (better name probably coming), or if you know of other fun Frankenstein related stuff or people on Tumblr/etc., or if you just want to squee about Frankenstein, let’s talk!
Totally a Mary Shelley fangirl. Sign me up!!! <3 <3 <3
Squee!! Awesome!!
I’m meeting with important university people this week to convince them that there is a great opportunity to interact with Shelley fans online, so yes – anyone who reads this and gets excited, let’s all be fanperson-flailing-friends!
IT’S ALIVE!! These things take a long time to get started, but I (@phdbff) am now reblogging from the new Mary Shelley themed account that I will use to share my Franken-journey. Please follow and reblog so that I can start building a base of people who love the ULTIMATE goth Mary Shelley! Posts from @frankenstein-assistant will feature the cool Mary Shelley & Frankenstein related books -- including original nineteenth-century copies of both the 1818 and 1831 editions -- that I find in the secret labyrinths of the Eaton Collection of Science Fiction & Fantasy!
@chrishogman, @selishady, @clara-peggotty, @schoolenthusiast, @spikeygorgeous, @sweetsugardreams, @soihavethis, @froborr, @edenfenixblogs, @bbcphile, @penemue269
"When Shelley's corpse washed ashore, a friend identified it by a copy of Keats's 1820 volume in the coat pocket, which he knew Shelley had taken with him. Then, after cremation in which Shelley's heart, hardened by calcium, did not burn, this same friend snatched it from the embers and presented it to Mary Shelley, who kept it thereafter in her desk, wrapped in a copy of 'Adonais."
Here’s your morbid literary fact of the day.
jesus christ, i will never be this goth.
Mary Shelley’s father taught her to spell her name by taking her to the graveyard and having her trace the letters on her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s gravestone.
NO ONE will ever be as goth.
didnt she also have sex on said grave
She lost her virginity on her mother’s grave yes
… that’s it we can all go home, peak goth was achieved before we even started.
JSTOR confirms it: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3177447
Mary Freaking Shelley is None More Goth personified.
@mama-germany Achieve maximum goth
@saarebitch
If I fail to reblog this, assume I’m stuck in my crypt, and someone needs to come help me.
She also wrote a post-apocalyptic science fiction novel focusing on the extinction of the human race and the meaninglessness of existence. In 1826.
Oh, and this isn’t especially goth, but my God, I respect her for this:
In 1827, Mary Shelley was party to a scheme that enabled her friend Isabel Robinson and Isabel’s lover, Mary Diana Dods, who wrote under the name David Lyndsay, to embark on a life together in France as man and wife.[126][note 13] With the help of [American actor John Howard] Payne, whom she kept in the dark about the details, Mary Shelley obtained false passports for the couple.[127]
The more I learn about Mary Shelley the more I love her
