“Fear of age and death often creeps coldly into my heart; and the more I live, the more I dread death, even while I abhor life. Such an enigma is man—born to perish—when he wars, as I do, against the established laws of his nature.” –Mary Shelley, “The Mortal Immortal”
Dr. Frankenstein’s monster is one of the most iconic figures in English literature, popularized through decades of writing, film, and comedy. But even before the invention of film, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein profoundly impacted scores of writers, gathering force for the genre that would ultimately become what we know as science fiction.
In this anthology, scholar of the fantastic David Sandner explores the first hundred years of Frankenstein’s influence. This collection of short stories and excerpts from work published between 1818 to 1918 demonstrates what a pioneering myth Frankenstein has always been—from the very day when lightning first struck and it opened its eyes on the world.
Mục lục
Part One
Of Creatures and Monsters
“The Vampyre” (1819), John William Polidori
“Fragment” (1819), Lord Byron
Excerpt from Presumption; or, The Fate of Frankenstein (1823), Richard Brinsley Peake
“The Monster Made by Man” (1825), Anonymous
Excerpt from The Mummy! (1827), Jane Webb
“Goblin Market” (1862), Christina Rossetti
Part Two
Byronic Heroes and Sympathetic Monsters
“Roger Dodsworth: The Reanimated Englishman” (1826), Mary Shelley
“The Mortal Immortal” (1833), Mary Shelley
Excerpt from Wuthering Heights (1847), Emily Brontë
Excerpt from Mary Barton (1848), Elizabeth Gaskell
Excerpt from Great Expectations (1861), Charles Dickens
Excerpt from The Sport of the Gods (1902), Paul Laurence Dunbar
Part Three
Mad Science!!!
“The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar” (1845), Edgar Allen Poe
Excerpt from The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), Robert Louis Stevenson
“The Monster-Maker” (1887), W. C. Morrow
Excerpt from The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896), H. G. Wells
“A Thousand Deaths” (1899), Jack London
“The Third Drug” (1908), Edith Nesbit
Part Four
From Automatons to Robots
“The New Frankenstein” (1838), Anonymous (attributed to William Maginn)
Excerpt from The Steam Man of the Prairies (1868), Edward S. Ellis
“The New Mother” (1882), Lucy Lane Clifford
“The Dancing Partner” (1893), Jerome K. Jerome
“A Wife Manufactured to Order” (1895), Alice W. Fuller
“The Lady Automaton” (1901), E. E. Kellett
Giới thiệu về tác giả
Dr. David Sandner is a Mythopoeic Award-nominated scholar of the fantastic and teaches at California State University, Fullerton. His books include Critical Approaches to the Fantastic, 1712-1831; Fantastic Literature: A Critical Reader; and Philip K. Dick: Essays of the Here and Now, among other books and essays. He digitally mapped Mary Shelley’s other SF work, The Last Man, for Space(s) of the Fantastic and founded an online database, The Frankenstein Meme, to study Shelley’s literary influence. As a writer, he publishes fiction and poetry and is a member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association and the Horror Writers Association. Learn more at davidsandner.com.