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Beyond “Frankenstein:” Mary Shelley’s Editorial Work

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As the world celebrates the 200th anniversary of the publication of Frankenstein this year, Mary Shelley’s name will be constantly invoked as the mother of science fiction, the famed daughter of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, and the tragic wife of the genius Romantic poet Percy Shelley—but there’s so much more to this woman than her creature and her relationships with others.
After Mary Shelley published Frankenstein at the age of 20, she went on to write other major works such as Mathilda and The Last Man, but the thing I find most interesting about Mary Shelley’s later career is her creative editing of her husband’s work after his death.
Less than three months after Percy’s death, Mary writes in her journal: “Beneath all this [grief], my imagination even flags. Literary labours, the improvement of my mind, & the enlargement of my ideas are the only occupations that elevate me from my lethargy” (Mary Shelley Journals 431). Thus, she set out to create a collection of Percy’s Posthumous Poems.
To do this, Mary faced the challenges of working as a single mother in the mid-19th century, gaining access to her very name from Percy Shelley’s vindictive father, and collecting manuscript documents scattered across an entire continent. This process of piecing together the best text version of a work through numerous drafts and contexts constitutes this project as a work of authorship as well as editorship, and in publishing his Posthumous Poems in 1824, she reformed our very idea who an “author” is. The Romantic period idea of an author was heavily influenced by “the author on the model of Wordsworth’s poet-prototype, the shepherd,” a lone creator working through his imaginative processes apart from the distractions of society (Hofkosh 247). What Mary did rejects that image completely.
I emphasize that gendered pronoun because there was a definite gender distinction between “authors” and “female authors” at this point in time. Furthermore, Mary did not co-write Percy’s poems per se, but working as his editor, piecing together his work to produce her best texts with accompanying introductory and textual notes, she became an author through her editorial work.
By broadening the definition of authorship beyond the lone male artist to include transcribers, editors, publishers, etc., we inevitably let women into positions of textual authority that they have not historically been allowed to occupy. The more we credit female editors as we credit female writers, the more cultural power they’ll gain—past and present—in forming not only a canon, but a more empathetic society (48).
So thank you Mary Shelley, and congratulations on 200 years of Frankenstein!

By Emma Irving

Works Cited:
Hofkosh, Sonia. “A Woman’s Profession: Sexual Difference and the Romance of Authorship.” Studies in Romanticism 32.2 (1993): 245-72. JSTOR [JSTOR]. Web. 17 Feb. 2017.
Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft. The Journals of Mary Shelley: 1814-1844. Ed. Paula R. Feldman and Diane Scott-Kilvert. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins UP, 1987. Print.
Wolfson, Susan J. “Editorial Privilege: Mary Shelley and Percy Shelley’s Audiences.” The Other Mary Shelley: Beyond Frankenstein. Ed. Audrey A. Fisch, Anne K. Mellor, and Esther H. Schor. New York: Oxford UP, 1993. 39-72. Print.

 

A Scary Good Read: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus

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2016 marks the 200th anniversary of the Haunted Summer; the summer of 1816 that Lord Byron, Claire Clairmont, John Polidori, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (later Mary Shelley) spent together at Lake Geneva. The group took refuge from the poor weather one rainy June day in the Villa Diodati. Back then they didn’t have Netflix or the internet to occupy their time, so what better activity for a group of intelligent, creative, bored minds to do than write?

Lord Byron challenged each person in the group to compose a ghost story. Despite Byron and P.B. Shelley being well-established writers of the time, they attempted the challenge with little success. Polidori, Byron’s personal physician, would later write The Vampyre, which was then revisited by Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Mary, however, was struck by inspiration. That haunted night gave birth to one of the most iconic, well-known, thought-provoking tales of all time: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus. She was only 18 years old during the Haunted Summer and 20 when her novel was published in 1818.

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The first edition left the author anonymous causing many people to attribute the novel to Mary’s father, William Godwin, an influential philosopher of the time (and whose ideals influenced the plot of the novel). The second edition, published in 1822, gave Mary the credit she deserved. Several more editions were published both during and after her lifetime.

It’s difficult, if not impossible, to list all the adaptations and creations that Frankenstein has influenced for the past 200 years. Literature, film, plays, television, and dance are just a few mediums by which people have explored the beloved story. In his book, The Detached Retina: Aspects of SF and Fantasy, writer and anthology editor Brian Aldiss supports the claim that Frankenstein is a progenitor of the science fiction genre and counts the novel as an ancestor of future works by the famous science fiction writer, H.G. Wells.

From a literary standpoint, the structure, flow, characterization, plot, and themes of this novel are so complex and interesting that people are still analyzing it today. Mary Shelley’s talent can be overshadowed by the success of her husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and the works of the male-dominated canon, but it is important to remember this incredible novel and its importance to literary and world history. So, if you’re looking for a spooky read this Halloween, pick up Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus. I promise I’m not tricking you—this book is a real treat!

Written by Jennifer Rohrbach.