Mary Shelley, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. Edited by Jefferson Hendricks, Reece M. Maguire, and L. C. Moffitt. The Storyport Press @ Centenary College of Louisiana, Shreveport, 2024.

By the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs.

In the summer of 1816, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797-1851), and her husband Percy Bysshe Shelley, visited the poet George Gordon, Lord Byron, and his personal physician John William Polidori at their villa on the shores of Lake Geneva, Switzerland. The appearance of Claire Clairmont—rumored to be the mistress of both Percy Shelley and Lord Byron—complicated the personal dynamics of that summer. The events of that visit have since become legend, as they gave birth to the first draft of the literary classic known as Frankenstein.

From the mind of nineteen-year-old Mary Shelley, Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus, jumpstarted questions that have haunted readers for over two centuries: Are there areas of knowledge humans shouldn’t explore? What responsibility do we have to that which we create? Ultimately, is there a difference between the human and the non-human? Images of Frankenstein’s Creature are omnipresent in movies, television, comics, and Halloween costumes, and remind us, in this age of intelligent machinery, that Frankenstein’s issues are our issues and will continue to be so as we move forward in the 21st century.

Storyport’s edition is based on Shelley’s original 1818 version. Using this text, L. C. Moffitt and Reece Maguire provide a Foreword and Afterword that help us think about Frankenstein as a powerful story of our time, a story of the human impulse to create and explore, and the consequences we might reap.

Callie Fedd

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ISBN : 979-8-9873536-3-9