Mary Shelley

Mary Shelley (1797-1851) began Frankenstein at eighteen, during the cold, sunless summer of 1816 at Lake Geneva, in response to a challenge to write a ghost story. It was published anonymously two years later and is now read as the first science fiction novel: the horror comes not from the supernatural but from a man who makes something and then refuses responsibility for it. The creature is nameless, articulate and — for much of the book — the most sympathetic character in it. A persistent confusion is worth noting: Frankenstein is the scientist, not the creature.