Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, the wife of Romantic poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley, is the author of the timeless classic Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus. Published anonymously in 1818 and later published under her name in 1823, the novel is a strange, exotic and brilliant investigation into subjects deemed to be the forbidden knowledge of their time – creation, creativity, the nature of life, the life force, and the existence and nature of the soul. Frankenstein is the story of a doctor on a quest to discover the secret of life who steals bodies from graves to try to create life from the parts and instead creates a monster. It is both a Gothic and Romantic novel, full of dark wanderings, night visions, death and destruction. As unintended consequences multiply and overwhelm Dr. Frankenstein, he is driven to avenge the dead and repair the damage – the result of having gone a step too far beyond the jurisdictions of 19th century science. Yes, there’s terror here, worthy of Boris Karloff, but there’s even more terror in Frankenstein’s consideration of those forbidden things we keep to the side, safe, and locked away in the dark.

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