The first edition of Frankenstein, or
The Modern Prometheus, was published in 1818, two hundred years
ago. Originally offered to the public as an anonymous work,
Frankenstein was both the apogee of the gothic horror
novel and the birth of the science fiction genre.
The public did not learn until years later that this masterpiece
had been penned by Mary
Wollstonecraft Shelley. Shelley had written the work on a rainy
day in 1816, when she was only nineteen. Incredibly,
twenty-year-old John
Polidori was simultaneously inventing the vampire genre just
down the hall in the same Geneva villa.
The actual publication date of the first edition was January 1,
1818, but the Halloween season is as good a time as any to
commemorate the two-hundredth anniversary of Frankenstein
and its relationship to copyright law. Here are five things you
should know.
