Book Description

Tor Classics are affordably-priced editions designed to attract the young reader. Original dynamic cover art enthusiastically represents the excitement of each story. Appropriate "reader friendly" type sizes have been chosen for each title—offering clear, accurate, and readable text. All editions are complete and unabridged, and feature Introductions and Afterwords.

This edition of Frankenstein includes a Foreword, Biographical Note, and Afterword by Keith Neilson.

When obsessed university student Victor Frankenstein finds the secret of animating dead flesh, he tries to create the first of a master race, stitching rotting corpses into a superhuman giant. Then the ghastly thing opens its hideous, soulless eyes and Frankenstein flees into the night, shrieking with horror--

Leaving a being who wants love and finds hate, wants friends and finds enemies, wants another and finds no one. Frankenstein is its father, mother, maker and living god, and Frankenstein has abandonded his own monster to a living hell of unutterable isolation. But now, unstoppable, the creature means to get revenge for having been born--

Not by killing its creator...but by destroying everything holds dear, and everyone Frankenstein loves...

Amazon.com

Frankenstein , loved by many decades of readers and praised by such eminent literary critics as Harold Bloom, seems hardly to need a recommendation. If you haven't read it recently, though, you may not remember the sweeping force of the prose, the grotesque, surreal imagery, and the multilayered doppelg?nger themes of Mary Shelley's masterpiece. As fantasy writer Jane Yolen writes of this (the reviewer's favorite) edition, "The strong black and whites of the main text [illustrations] are dark and brooding, with unremitting shadows and stark contrasts. But the central conversation with the monster--who owes nothing to the overused movie image … but is rather the novel's charnel-house composite--is where [Barry] Moser's illustrations show their greatest power ... The viewer can all but smell the powerful stench of the monster's breath as its words spill out across the page. Strong book-making for one of the world's strongest and most remarkable books." Includes an illuminating afterword by Joyce Carol Oates.

From School Library Journal

Grade 9 Up-Full-color drawings, photographs, and reproductions with extended captions have been added to the unedited text of Shelley's novel, thus placing the work in the context of the era in which it was written. The artwork faithfully represents the text and makes this edition appealing to reluctant readers. Unfortunately, many of the captions provide tangential information that, although interesting, interrupts the flow of the story. However, readers will quickly learn that it is not necessary to read every caption and appreciate this volume for its many quality illustrations.

　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Michele Snyder, Chappaqua Public Library, NY

From Booklist

Part of the Whole Story series, this is the full text of Mary Shelley's classic gothic story, which was first published in 1818 and has been a wild success ever since. Philippe Munch's illustrations have none of the power of Barry Moser's unforgettable woodcuts that evoke the loneliness of the grotesque outsider (in the Pennyroyal edition published by the University of California Press in 1984). The design here is crowded, and the type is small. However, the many period prints and maps in color and in black and white, with long, detailed captions, do provide the historical setting for the story, its geography, customs, and ideas. Teens enthralled by pop versions of the myth as well as science fiction fans will be interested in going back to the full version of what has been called the first science fiction novel and learning about the circumstances under which it was written by a woman, just 18 years old, 170 years ago.

　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　 Hazel Rochman

From AudioFile

With so many poor adaptations of Mary Shelley's classic work in all forms of media, it's refreshing to come across a production that retains the quality, premise, and themes of the original book. As the title and principal character, Dr. Frankenstein has an affected voice that suits his tragically ambitious character. The supporting cast works well in a full range of emotions. The script and vocal characterizations de-emphasize Shelley's vision of an intelligent and cunning monster, but this is a quibble. This production is a boon for students new to the book, teachers looking for supplemental classroom materials, and fans of classic literature. A.F.

From the Back Cover

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is one of the masterpieces of nineteenth-century Gothicism. While stay-ing in the Swiss Alps in 1816 with her lover Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, and others, Mary, then eighteen, began to concoct the story of Dr. Victor Frankenstein and the monster he brings to life by electricity. Written in a time of great personal tragedy, it is a subversive and morbid story warning against the dehumanization of art and the corrupting influence of science. Packed with allusions and literary references, it is also one of the best thrillers ever written. Frankenstein; Or, the Modern Prometheus was an instant bestseller on publication in 1818. The prototype of the science fiction novel, it has spawned countless imitations and adaptations but retains its original power.

This Modern Library edition includes a new Introduction by Wendy Steiner, the chair of the English department at the University of Pennsylvania and author of The Scandal of Pleasure.

Mary Shelley was born Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin in 1797 in London. She eloped to France with Shelley, whom she married in 1816. After Frankenstein, she wrote several novels, including Valperga and Falkner, and edited editions of the poetry of Shelley, who had died in 1822. Mary Shelley died in London in 1851.

About Author

Marilyn Butler is King Edward VII Professor of English Literature at King's College, Cambridge. She is the author of Romantics, Rebels, and Reactionaries (1981) and co-editor of Pickering's Works of Mary Wollstonecraft (1989). She has also edited Mary Shelley's The last Man, published in World's Classics in 1994. .

Book Dimension:

length: (cm)17.5 　　　 　　　　　 　width:(cm) 11