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Accession number:
PML 16799
Published:
London : Printed for Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor, & Jones, Finsbury Square, 1818.
Description:
3 v. in 1 (xii, 181 [1]; [4] 156; [4] 192p.) ; 18 cm.
Credit:
Purchased by Pierpont Morgan in 1910.
The seed of Mary Shelley's masterpiece came to her in a dream of a young scientist patching together a new being from dead bodies. This copy preserves her autograph changes to the first edition, making the volume an important witness to her creative process. It is also a memorial to grief. After the drowning of her husband, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, in July 1822, Mary Shelley turned to everyone she could for sympathy, and gave this copy of Frankenstein to a woman now known only as Mrs. Thomas, who describes its writer as "helpless, Pennyless, and broken hearted."
Notes:
First ed.
Binding:
Contemporary mottled calf, in modern cloth folding case.
Provenance:
With Mary Shelley's autograph notes and revisions, and an inscription presenting the book to Mrs. Thomas.
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