Frankenstein, A Longman Cultural Edition

From the Longman Cultural Editions series, this second edition of Frankenstein presents Mary Shelley's remarkable novel in several provocative and illuminating contexts: cultural, critical, and literary.      Series Editor Susan J. Wolfson presents the 1818 version of Mary Shelley's famous novel in its cultural and historical contexts. Like all great works of fiction, Frankenstein gains depth and dimension from its "conversation" with contemporary texts, especially those by Shelley's own parents, husband, and friends.  A lively introduction is complemented by a chronology coordinating Shelley's life with key historical events and a speculative calendar of the novel's events in the late eighteenth century.  In addition to the 1818 text, this cultural edition features the introduction to and a sample revision of the 1831 version.  New to this Edition is Frankentalk, a section of selected references to Frankenstein in the popular press, and the complete text of Richard Brinsley Peake’s Frankenstein, A Romantic Drama, the first stage version of Frankenstein.

Table of Contents:
List of Illustrations      About Longman Cultural Editions      About This Edition      Introduction      Table of Dates      Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818)                Volume I                Volume II                Volume III    from Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus (1831)                M. W. S.’s Introduction                Some Additions to Robert Walton’s first letters                Some Additions and Revisions to Victor Frankenstein’s Narrative                            Victor’s childhood and the adoption of Elizabeth–Victor’s enchantment with occult science and his encounter with modern science–Victor’s departure for University of ­Ingolstadt–Clerval’s straits–Victor meets Professors Krempe and Waldman–Victor’s health suffers–Elizabeth’s report on Ernest Frankenstein–Clerval’s lament for William–Victor’s anguish over Justine and William–­Victor’s continuing agony–[Creature’s story of framing Justine]–Victor’s plans for a second creature–Clerval’s imperial ambitions–Victor’s apprehensions for his family, his longing for oblivion–Victor’s secret Contexts      Monsters, Visionaries, and Mary Shelley     Aesthetic Adventures     Edmund Burke on “the Sublime and the Beautiful”     Mary Wollstonecraft on Burke’s genderings     William Gilpin on “the Picturesque”     Samuel Taylor Coleridge, from The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere (1798)     Mary Wollstonecraft, from Maria, or The Wrongs of Woman: Jemima’s story     Mary Godwin (Shelley), from her journal of 1815: the death of her first baby     Percy Bysshe Shelley, from Alasto; or, The Spirit of Solitude     Mary Shelley, with Percy Bysshe Shelley, from History of a Six Weeks’ Tour: Alpine scenery     Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mont Blanc     George Gordon, Lord Byron                 from Manfred, A Dramatic Poem                 from Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Canto the Third: Alpine thunderstorm     Leigh Hunt, from Blue-Stocking Revels, or The Feast of the Violets     Dr. Benjamin Spock, from Baby and Child Care     The Story-Telling Compact    George Gordon, Lord Byron, A Fragment     John William Polidori, The Vampyre     God, Adam, and Satan    Genesis: chapters 2 and 3 (King James Bible)   John Milton, from Paradise Lost     William Godwin, from Political Justice   George Gordon, Lord Byron, Prometheus    William Hazlitt, remarks on Satan, from Lectures on the English Poet     Percy Bysshe Shelley             from Prometheus Unbound                 from A Defence of Poetry     Richard Brinsley Peake, Frankenstein, A Romantic Drama in Three Acts      Reviews and Reactions                [John Wilson Croker], Quarterly Review, January 1818                 [Walter Scott], Blackwood’s Edinburgh Review, March 1818                 (Scot’s) Edinburgh Magazine and Literary Miscellany, March 1818                 Belle Assemblée, March 1818                 British Critic, April 1818                 Gentleman’s Magazine, April 1818                 Monthly Review, April 1818                 Literary Panorama, June 1818                 Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, March 1823                 London Morning Post, reviews of Peake’s Frankenstein, July 1823                 George Canning, remarks in Parliament, March 1824                 Knight’s Quarterly Magazine, August 1824                 London Literary Gazette, 1831                 [Percy Bysshe Shelley, posthumous], Anthenæum, November 1832                 Frankentalk: “Frankenstein” in the Popular Press of Today             Further Reading and Viewing      

About the Author :
Susan J. Wolfson is professor of English at Princeton University. In addition to this present volume, her editorial work includes  Felicia Hemans (Princeton UP, 2000) and the Longman Cultural Edition of John Keats.  With Claudia Johnson, she is coeditor of the Longman Cultural Edition of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. With Peter Manning, she is coeditor of the Romantics volume in The Longman Anthology of British Literature, and Selected Poems of Lord Byron (Penguin, 2005).  Her critical books include the prize-winning Formal Charges: The Shaping of Poetry in British Romanticism (Stanford UP, 1997) and Borderlines: The Shiftings of Gender in British Romanticism (Stanford UP, 2007).