30th August: Frankenstein Day

Frankenstein Day Celebrates the birthday of author Mary Wollenstone Shelley (born in 1797) who wrote the book Frankenstein in 1818. Here are 10 things you might not know about the Frankenstein story:

1. The novel has a subtitle, The Modern Prometheus. Prometheus, in Greek mythology, was the Titan who created mankind.
2. We have dreary weather to thank for Frankenstein. Percy Shelley, Mary, Lord Byron, and John Polidori had gone on holiday to Switzerland, but the weather was so awful they stayed indoors reading most of the time, and then decided to have the competition to see who could write the best horror story. Lord Byron's story, although he only wrote fragments of it down, and didn't give it a title, and Polidori's story which evolved into The Vampyre, the first vampire novel were based on old vampire legends - so vampires, as well as Frankenstein, owe their literary existence to that contest.
3. The idea for the story came to Mary in a dream. The pressure to come up with a story for the forthcoming horror story contest had been getting to her - for days she was unable to come up with any ideas - and her anxiety was giving her nightmares!
4. It was, at first, going to be a short story, but Percy encouraged Mary to expand it into a novel.
5. It seems likely that Mary was exorcising some demons of her own in writing the book. Victor Frankenstein may have been based on Shelley, who sometimes used the name Victor as a pen name, and had dabbled in scientific experiments. The novel's themes of motherhood, creation and abandonment could well have arisen from the fact that three years before, Mary had given birth to Shelley's baby, which died less than two weeks later. While she was dealing with this, Shelley, instead of supporting her, had run off to have a torrid affair with her sister, Claire.
6. The first edition was published anonymously. Mary's name first appeared on the second edition. In 1831, a third edition was produced, the one most people read today. This edition had been revised by Mary in response to pressure to make it more conservative.
7. The novel was panned by the critics of the time, partly because it dealt with themes of creation and playing god; and possibly because, even though they didn't know who had written it, they knew the author was a woman. The general public, however, loved it, and the theatre adaptations that followed.
8. The novel is written in the form of letters between Captain Robert Walton and his sister, Margaret Walton Saville.
9. Although the monster is generally known as Frankenstein, in the novel the monster is never given a name.
10. The first ever Frankenstein film was produced by Edison's film company, in 1910, and was just 12 minutes long.