Here’s an interesting piece from Newsweek (of all places) on the collaborative effort of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley and her husband Percy Shelley on her novel Frankenstein. Here’s a taste — go read the whole thing:
Few people did more to promote the archetype of the independent Romantic hero than Percy Shelley. It turns out, though, that he was a conscientious helpmate. By examining Mary’s original drafts, Shelley scholar Charles E. Robinson identified Percy’s contributions to Frankenstein and, in 1996, edited a reproduction of Mary’s notebooks for scholarly audiences. Now he has published The Original Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus, by Mary Shelley (with Percy Shelley). The first part of the new book highlights Percy’s edits and the second reveals Mary’s lone voice. “The novel was conceived and mainly written by Mary Shelley,” Robinson writes in his introduction, but he estimates that Percy wrote “at least” 4,000 to 5,000 words of the 72,000 total. Many of -Percy’s fixes are minor. Some are good, some bad. Percy may have corrected Mary’s parallel constructions, but he also mucked up her more straightforward language. “Smallness” became “minuteness.” “I did not despair” became “I doubted not that I should ultimately succeed.” Frankenstein was already turgid; Percy made it more so.
Yet he also helped with some of the novel’s most moving lines: the monster’s appeal to his creator for affection. “Remember that I am thy creature—Thy Adam—or rather the fallen angel for every where I see bliss while I alome [sic] am irrecoverably wretched,” Mary had written. Percy altered it: “Remember that I am thy creature—I ought to be thy Adam—but I am rather the fallen angel, whom thou drivest from joy for no misdeed; everywhere I see bliss from which I alone am irrevocably excluded.” Percy grasped what lay beneath Mary’s language and pulled it to the surface. “I ought to be thy Adam,” the creature says—but his creator rejected him before his mate was made. He is not inhuman because he was brought to life on a surgical table. He is inhuman because he is alone.
Percy Bysshe Shelley was a dreadful person,along with his pal Lord Byron…Paul Johnson had a nice chapter on him in his book “Intellectuals”….
Agreed on that. I loved Johnson’s books in that series… His one on Mae West in Heroes was fascinating I must say.
What did he say about Mae West?
Oh no kidding. I ripped both of them to shreds at Modcom. What is fascinating in an utterly bizarre way is how feminazi’s are fascinated with them. They despise them but also use them as some sort of example of manhood. I remember thinking as one of my lit professors went off on Byron for his behavior and yet I sensed she was going back to her time as a grad student and projecting the loathing she felt for a prof she fell for onto Byron. You know the most likely UGLY dude who captures women with his words and seduces them and then treats them like crap? God I remember when I realized that crap went on and I was like um…YUCK! On one hand this woman beat the hell out of Shelley and Byron and on the other hand she was totally smitten. Freaking wierd.
I’ve never forgotten a magazine story I read years ago. It’s documented that Mary Shelley started writing Frankenstein while she and Percy, along with Byron and various hangers-on, were vacationing together in a castle in the Alps. Everyone agreed to write a “ghost story,” to see who wrote the best, but Mary’s was the only one that actually got finished.
Byron was accompanied by his personal physician, a Dr. Polidori. Byron treated the man like dirt, teasing him constantly, and in time the doctor stopped treating him. But he went on to write a horror story of his own, called (I think), The Vampyre. It was (according to the article and my memory), the first vampire book ever published in English, and its vampire was patterned closely after Byron.
The article claimed that this book set the pattern for English literary vampires ever after, including Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
So, when you read Dracula (or see any of its movie retellings), you’re watching a character originally based on that s.o.b., George Gordon, Lord Byron. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Polidori
Frankenstein is a yawner. However, I do recommend Dean Koontz’ contemporary Frankenstein trilogy. The last volume probably isn’t as well developed as it might have been, but it’s good, and the author takes his inspiration, quite openly, from C. S. Lewis’ That Hideous Strength.
Yeah,Floyd,and the chapter on the intellectual Karl Marx is priceless…in a few pages Johnson shows what a liar he was,and what a stench of a human being he was (he never bathed)
Bathing is bourgeois.
Great…..thanks Scott for that little nugget of information. Marx never bathed….OMG!
Fascinating, really fascinating. Frankenstein is essentially the first real Science Fiction novel, and interestingly it was written in the middle of a global climate catastrophy – “The Year Without a Summer” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_year_without_a_summer – where they basically stayed in writing for months on end because it was just too nasty to go out and play.
I know next to nothing about the Shellys and Byron, mainly because I couldn’t care less about them. I just naturally assumed by them being upper-class british fops that they were probably awful people, opium fiends, bisexual swingers, canibalism enthusiasts, you know, whatever terrible thing you want to say about them, I’m game for it. Still, my people owe Mary a big debt of gratitude for this one book.
Yeah,Stephanie,when I was in London a couple of years ago I was going to spit on his grave at Highgate Cemetary,but I got lost…
Awe man now you gave me a perfect London vacation mission…find Karl Marx grave and spit on it…..Things to do in London………Hmmmmmmmmm
What kind of things did Shelley, Byron, and Marx do?
Yes, I want to know too
Just off the top of my head, not going to the book, Shelley borrowed lots of money from friends and then forgot to repay it. He also abandoned his wife, who then committed suicide. Byron was just an all-around jerk and user, who covered his private depravities with high-minded rhetoric about freedom (the forerunner of modern liberals). Marx wrote reams about the oppression of the lower classes, but kept a servant in his home at extremely low wages all her life. He also made up most of the statistics cited in “Das Kapital.”
Lars is correct. You guys should know this stuff to. Shelley abadoned his wife, took young Mary Wallstonecraft as his lover and skipped out of England. Byron had countless lovers both female and at the end he had a boy and I mean a teenager with him when he died in Greece. They were amoral and the worst kind of men. Many of the poets were. One of my favorites is Rabbie Burns however Burns was a notorious womanizing piggy. The writing for the most part was good but it never reflected the man writing it. horses asses all of them.
And Marx…come on…Mr. Communist…need we say more? I find it ironic that my cousins in Germany gave rise to the two most awful ideas in human history: Communism and Nazism…thanks guys. Good job. Barf.
Yeah, I had Marx but didn’t know the ugliness of the others.
And don’t forget,Stephanie,one of Byron’s lovers was his half sister!
Any poets who led morally decent lives?
John Milton, TS Eliot, Robert Frost, etc. A lot of poets led relatively normal lives.
Scott thanks for reminding me…ick..or the french form of ick eek!
I don’t know Kit. WB Yeates seemed like a pretty down to earth guy. Hell of a good writer my favorite poet. I also liked TS Elliott and some of WH Auden. Auden was gay and was with I think Christopher Isherwood for years before Isherwood died. The poem Funeral Blues is a really good poem as is as is Musee de Beaux Arts. I also really liked Dylan Thomas even if he was a drunk. There is just something so perverse about Shelley and Byron that anything the rest I listed ever did pales in comparison to those two freakish knuckleheads. THey would have been the Michael Moores, Keith Olberdickheads of their times.
Christina Rossetti, William Blake, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (although in later life he apparently was dependent on opium for pain and suffering with stomach problems and burying 2 wives). Tennyson was pretty moral, although not a Christian by his own words.
“I thought all writers drank to excess and beat their wives” “I think I secretly wanted to be a writer” -Philadelphia Story
I forgot about Rosetti, Blake and Longfellow. All great Romantic poets in their own rights as was Keats. Keats never had a chance to debauch himself as he died young of TB.
Us Potes (by Franklin P. Adams)
Swift was sweet on Stella;
Poe had his Lenore;
Burns’ fancy turned to Nancy
And a dozen more.
Pope was quite a trifler;
Goldsmith was a case;
Byron’d flirt with any skirt
From Liverpool to Thrace.
Sheridan philandered;
Shelley, Keats and Moore
All were there with some affair
Far from lit’rachoor.
Fickle is the heart of
Each immortal bard.
Mine alone is made of stone–
Gotta work too hard.
This then is the perfect place to mention Andrew Klavan’s article on Wordsworth — the conservative.
http://www.city-journal.org/2009/19_3_wordsworth.html
I’m still surprised you didn’t tack this onto the Klavan RF3D interview posts. Either way, nicely done.