During the cold, stormy “Year Without a Summer,” Mary Godwin (later Mary Shelley), Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron, and others gathered near Lake Geneva. Byron proposed a ghost-story competition that became the immediate creative catalyst for Frankenstein and other works from the circle.
In the days following the Villa Diodati challenge, Mary Shelley later recalled experiencing a vivid “waking dream” of a student of “unhallowed arts” animating a being—an origin story she would publish in her 1831 introduction.
Mary began turning the “waking dream” into a narrative, initially as a short ghost story, before expanding it into a full novel over the following months with encouragement from Percy Shelley.
Mary Shelley finished drafting Frankenstein in spring 1817 (commonly dated to April/May), completing the novel’s core text before publication negotiations and final preparations.
Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus was published in London in three volumes by Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor, & Jones. The edition appeared anonymously, with a preface by Percy Bysshe Shelley and a dedication to William Godwin.
An influential early review in The Quarterly Review (anonymous at the time; later attributed to John Wilson Croker) condemned the novel as sensational and morally suspect, shaping a hostile strand of its early critical reception.
Walter Scott reviewed Frankenstein in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, recognizing the novel’s imaginative force even while questioning aspects of plausibility—an important counterweight to more scathing early critiques.
A French translation—Frankenstein: ou le Prométhée Moderne, translated by Jules Saladin—appeared early in the novel’s afterlife, extending its readership beyond Britain and supporting its rapid international circulation.
Richard Brinsley Peake’s stage adaptation Presumption; or, the Fate of Frankenstein opened at the English Opera House (Lyceum). Its strong run helped trigger renewed attention to the novel and encouraged republication.
Following the stage success, a new two-volume edition was issued by G. & W. B. Whittaker. It is notable for explicitly crediting Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley on the title page, ending the earlier anonymity in common circulation.
After returning to England, Mary Shelley attended Presumption during its original run, later noting that the play’s success made her “famous.” It was the only known Frankenstein adaptation she saw in her lifetime.
A revised edition (often treated as the third edition) appeared from Henry Colburn & Richard Bentley, marketed as a more accessible “popular” version. Mary Shelley supplied a new introduction recounting the novel’s origins and made substantial textual revisions that strongly influenced later readership.
Mary Shelley and the Making and Reception of Frankenstein (1816–1831)
