Reading Order
FrankensteinMary Shelley Works Reading Order
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818) is one of the first science fiction novels and one of the most philosophically enduring works in the English language — the story of Victor Frankenstein, a young scientist who creates a living creature from assembled body parts and animates it with electricity, then abandons his creation in horror, setting in motion a tragedy of isolation, longing, and revenge. Written when Shelley was eighteen years old, it has never been out of print.
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Frankenstein
Complete Frankenstein Book List
- 1Buy
Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus
Mary Shelley·1818·The first edition — published anonymously in 1818, before the revised 1831 edition. The 1818 text is generally preferred by scholars as it is less revised and closer to Shelley's original vision; the 1831 edition is more commonly read. - 2Buy
The Last Man
Mary Shelley·1826·Shelley's apocalyptic novel set at the end of the 21st century, following Lionel Verney as a plague destroys humanity — one of the first post-apocalyptic novels and a work that shares Frankenstein's preoccupation with isolation, loss, and the limits of human ambition. - 3Buy
Mathilda
Mary Shelley·1959·A novella Shelley wrote in 1820 but was not published until 1959 — deeply autobiographical, exploring father-daughter relationships, depression, and grief, and often read alongside Frankenstein as a companion to its themes of abandonment and longing. - 4Buy
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
Robert Louis Stevenson·1886·Stevenson's Gothic novella about a scientist who creates a drug that separates his respectable and depraved selves — one of the closest thematic companions to Frankenstein in its exploration of science, the double, and the dangers of unchecked ambition. - 5Buy
The Island of Doctor Moreau
H.G. Wells·1896·Wells's science fiction horror novel about a scientist who vivisects animals to create human-like hybrids — the direct inheritor of Shelley's question about the ethical limits of scientific creation. - 6Buy
Never Let Me Go
Kazuo Ishiguro·2005·Ishiguro's novel about human clones raised as organ donors, which asks Frankenstein's core question from the creature's perspective: what moral status and rights belong to beings created by scientific processes rather than born? - 7Buy
Oryx and Crake
Margaret Atwood·2003·Atwood's post-apocalyptic novel about a scientist who engineers a new species to replace humanity — a direct contemporary descendent of Frankenstein's meditation on the hubris of creation and the unintended consequences of scientific ambition.
Frankenstein — Frequently Asked Questions
Who is the monster in Frankenstein?
This is one of the novel's central questions. The creature is never named — he is referred to variously as the creature, the wretch, the daemon, and the monster, and has no name of his own. Victor Frankenstein refuses to name him or acknowledge his creation. The novel presents both Victor and his creature as monsters: Victor for creating life and then abandoning it, and the creature for the murders he commits in response to his abandonment. The creature is, famously, deeply sympathetic in the novel — he is articulate, feeling, and longing for connection — and much of the book argues that it is Victor's rejection, not the creature's nature, that makes him dangerous. The popular image of the flat-headed, bolt-necked monster comes from the 1931 James Whale film, not the novel.
What does Frankenstein have to do with the subtitle The Modern Prometheus?
In Greek mythology, Prometheus was the Titan who stole fire from the gods and gave it to humanity, and was punished by Zeus with eternal torment (chained to a rock, an eagle ate his liver daily). Shelley invokes Prometheus to characterize Victor Frankenstein's transgression: like Prometheus, Victor steals a divine power (the power to create life) and brings it into the human world, and like Prometheus, he is punished for doing so. The Romantic poets (especially Percy Shelley and Byron, both of whom were part of the circle in which Frankenstein was conceived) saw Prometheus as a heroic rebel against oppressive divine authority; Mary Shelley's use of the subtitle questions this heroism, suggesting that the act of creation carries responsibilities that Victor refuses to bear.
How was Frankenstein written?
Frankenstein was written during the 'Year Without a Summer' of 1816, when Mary Godwin (not yet married to Percy Shelley) was staying with Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, and John Polidori at the Villa Diodati on Lake Geneva. Unusually cold and dark weather (caused by the 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia) kept the group indoors; Byron proposed a ghost-story competition. Mary Shelley, then eighteen, struggled to think of an idea until she had a waking dream — a vision of a 'pale student of unhallowed arts' kneeling beside the creature he had assembled. She wrote the story that became Frankenstein from that image. Percy Shelley encouraged her to expand it into a novel; it was published in 1818 when she was twenty.
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