Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus: GCSE English Illustrated Student Edition with wide annotation friendly margins

By Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Book Overview

What has this student edition got over other editions?Wide margins that you can annotate inIllustrated Original text, word for word.Background informationDesigned for the new English GCSEApproved and tested on students Once you buy a CBy Student Edition book, you'll never buy anything else again Visit www.cbypublishing.co.uk to view our full range of products.

It was on a dreary night of November that I beheld the accomplishment of my toils. With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet.

Summer, 1816. The Summer That Never Was. The same clouds, rain and pitchy darkness that had enabled Wellington to triumph at Waterloo a year previously still hang low over Europe. Byron, Polidori, Clairmont and the Shelleys gather at the Villa Diodati by Lake Geneva, and in the obscurity of the days filled with night, compose horrific tales of the fantastic. From Polidori comes "The Vampyre", the first romantic work of vampire fiction. From Byron, a "Fragment of a Novel", another vampiric narrative. But Mary Shelley's offering is remembered above any of them: Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, the harrowing story of, not the monster within the man as in so much Gothic possession literature, but the man within the monster. Dispel all thoughts of Boris Karloff here and now. This book is something else entirely.

Following Frankenstein's inclusion upon the new specification for GCSE English Literature (first examinations 2017), CBy Publishing hereby publishes the full 1818 text, complete with annotation-friendly margins and a plethora of background material.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1533532389
• ISBN13: 9781533532381
• Release Date: May 2016
• Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
• Length: 196 Pages
• Weight: 1.06 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 6.7" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

"Cursed, cursed, creator." - The monster

Victor grew up reading the works of Paracelsus, Agrippa, and Albertus Magnus, the alchemists of the time. Toss in a little natural philosophy (sciences) and you have the making of a monster. Or at least a being that, after being spurned for looking ugly, becomes ugly. So, for revenge, the creature decides that unless Victor makes another (female this time) creature, Victor will also suffer the loss of friends and relatives. What is Victor to do? Bow to the wishes and needs of his creation? Or challenge it to “the death”? What would you do? Although the concept of the monster is good, and the conflicts of the story are well thought out, Shelly suffers from the writing style of the time. Many people do not finish the book as the language is stilted and verbose, for example, when was the last time you said, "Little did I then expect the calamity that was in a few moments to overwhelm me and extinguish in horror and despair all fear of ignominy of death." Much of the book seems like a travel log filler. More time is spent describing the surroundings of Europe than the reason for traveling or just traveling. Many writers use traveling to reflect time passing or the character growing in stature or knowledge. In this story, they just travel a lot. This book is worth plodding through for moviegoers. The record needs to be set straight. The first shock is that the creator is named Victor Frankenstein; the creature is just a "monster", not Frankenstein. It is Victor who is backward, which adds to his doing the impossible by not knowing any better. The monster is well-read in "Sorrows of a Young Werther," "Paradise Lost," and Plutarch's "Lives." The debate (mixed with a few murders) rages on as to whether the monster was doing evil because of his nature or because he was spurned.

Great classic illustration. Made the book easy to understand

Great classic illustration. Made the book easy to understand in high school test years ago. And is great for my younger kids to be introduced to the classic !!