Mary Shelley: Frankenstein's Composition, Publications, and Early Reception (1816–1831)
In the cold, stormy “year without a summer,” Mary Godwin (later Mary Shelley) stayed near Lake Geneva with Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron, and others. During evenings indoors at Villa Diodati, Byron suggested that each person write a ghost story. This friendly contest created the immediate setting in which Mary began searching for an idea that could sustain a longer tale.
After days of struggling to invent a plot, Mary later described a sudden mental image: a student of science who makes a living being and recoils in horror when it moves. That image supplied the story’s central conflict—creation followed by abandonment—and helped her move from a short tale idea toward a full novel. In her 1831 introduction, she tied this moment to the 1816 gathering and its conversations about science and life.
Mary began drafting what became the 1818 novel in manuscript notebooks now associated with the Abinger collection at the Bodleian Libraries. The Shelley-Godwin Archive dates major drafting work in Notebook A to roughly August through early December 1816, with later revisions. These surviving pages show the novel taking shape through multiple hands, including editorial work by Percy Bysshe Shelley.
After Notebook A, Mary continued the draft in Notebook B, which the Shelley-Godwin Archive dates from about December 1816 to April 1817. By this point the project had grown into a substantial two-volume draft, with ongoing corrections. The draft stage mattered because it established most of the story that would appear in print in 1818.
From mid-April to mid-May 1817, Mary copied her draft into a cleaner “fair copy,” the version typically used to approach publishers. The Shelley-Godwin Archive links this work to dated journal entries such as “Transcribe” and “Finish transcribing,” showing a focused push to prepare the manuscript. This step turned a working draft into a text ready for the book trade.
In late May 1817, Mary’s journal notes indicate that publisher John Murray had the manuscript and that “Murray likes F.” The Shelley-Godwin Archive treats this as evidence the fair-copy notebooks were submitted for Murray’s consideration. Even though the novel did not ultimately appear under Murray’s imprint, this marks an early attempt to place the book with a major London publisher.
The first edition of Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus was published in London on January 1, 1818, by Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor & Jones. It appeared anonymously, with a preface by Percy Bysshe Shelley and a dedication to William Godwin, Mary’s father. Issued in the common three-volume format of the period, the book’s anonymity shaped early debate about who wrote it and why.
In January 1818, The Quarterly Review published a harsh review that framed the book as both shocking and absurd, raising moral objections to its subject matter. The reviewer also implied the author’s identity and gender, comments that influenced how some readers interpreted the novel’s tone and purpose. This review is a key early marker of the mixed and politicized reception the book received.
In March 1818, Walter Scott reviewed Frankenstein in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine and treated it as a serious and imaginative work. He discussed the novel’s storytelling power even while noting its startling premise. Scott’s attention gave the book credibility in a major literary periodical and helped counter purely dismissive responses.
Richard Brinsley Peake’s theatrical adaptation Presumption; or, the Fate of Frankenstein opened at the English Opera House in London on July 28, 1823. As the first recorded stage adaptation, it reshaped public expectations by turning the story into a spectacle designed for popular audiences. Its success helped drive renewed demand for the novel.
On August 11, 1823, a new English edition of Frankenstein was published by G. and W. B. Whittaker in two volumes. Unlike the 1818 printing, the title page credited Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, making her authorship public in a major way. This edition connected the book’s growing fame—boosted by the stage version—to Mary’s literary identity and finances.
On October 31, 1831, Frankenstein appeared in Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley’s “Standard Novels” series in a revised version prepared by Mary Shelley. This edition added her influential introduction about the book’s origins and made significant stylistic and interpretive changes, becoming the version many later readers knew best. It closed the 1816–1831 arc by turning a youthful, anonymously published experiment into an established, author-claimed classic with a standardized text for the wider market.