Frankenstein (First Folio Society Edition)
SHELLEY, Mary. Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. London: The Folio Society, 2004.
8vo (228 x 150 mm). Original publisher's grey cloth blocked with a wrap-around design in black and silver by Harry Brockway. Dark red endpapers. xxviii, 221pp., with 10 wood-engraved plates by Harry Brockway. Introduction by Miranda Seymour. Housed in black publisher's slipcase. First Folio Society edition.
On a stormy night in June 1816, four friends sheltering from a freakish summer at the Villa Diodati beside Lake Geneva dared each other to write ghost stories. The result, from an eighteen-year-old Mary Godwin — not yet married, not yet famous — was Frankenstein, published anonymously two years later and destined to haunt the imagination of Western culture for the next two centuries.
The novel is many things at once: a Gothic thriller, a meditation on the ethics of creation, a lament for the outcast, and — read in the light of its extraordinary origin — a work of almost reckless imaginative daring from a writer who had barely reached adulthood. It is also, with some claim, the first true science fiction novel, grounding its terrors not in the supernatural but in the possibilities of science taken beyond the limits of the human.
The Folio Society came to it remarkably late — this 2004 edition is, astonishingly, the first time the book appeared under their imprint — but the wait was worth it. Harry Brockway's ten wood-engraved illustrations are models of restraint, focusing on the creature's desolation and fury rather than reaching for easy horror, and Miranda Seymour, Shelley's most distinguished modern biographer, provides the introduction.
A pristine copy, fine in its black slipcase, presenting as new.
This book is currently not on display in store.
If you would like more information or to arrange a viewing, please contact: [email protected]
Catalogue Number: HH000376
Original: $117.84
-65%$117.84
$41.24
Description
SHELLEY, Mary. Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. London: The Folio Society, 2004.
8vo (228 x 150 mm). Original publisher's grey cloth blocked with a wrap-around design in black and silver by Harry Brockway. Dark red endpapers. xxviii, 221pp., with 10 wood-engraved plates by Harry Brockway. Introduction by Miranda Seymour. Housed in black publisher's slipcase. First Folio Society edition.
On a stormy night in June 1816, four friends sheltering from a freakish summer at the Villa Diodati beside Lake Geneva dared each other to write ghost stories. The result, from an eighteen-year-old Mary Godwin — not yet married, not yet famous — was Frankenstein, published anonymously two years later and destined to haunt the imagination of Western culture for the next two centuries.
The novel is many things at once: a Gothic thriller, a meditation on the ethics of creation, a lament for the outcast, and — read in the light of its extraordinary origin — a work of almost reckless imaginative daring from a writer who had barely reached adulthood. It is also, with some claim, the first true science fiction novel, grounding its terrors not in the supernatural but in the possibilities of science taken beyond the limits of the human.
The Folio Society came to it remarkably late — this 2004 edition is, astonishingly, the first time the book appeared under their imprint — but the wait was worth it. Harry Brockway's ten wood-engraved illustrations are models of restraint, focusing on the creature's desolation and fury rather than reaching for easy horror, and Miranda Seymour, Shelley's most distinguished modern biographer, provides the introduction.
A pristine copy, fine in its black slipcase, presenting as new.
This book is currently not on display in store.
If you would like more information or to arrange a viewing, please contact: [email protected]
Catalogue Number: HH000376
