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Product Description Frankenstein is the most celebrated horror story ever written. It tells the dreadful tale of Victor Frankenstein, a visionary young student of natural philosophy, who discovers the secret of life. In the grip of his obsession he constructs a being from dead body parts, and animates this creature. The results for Victor and for his family are catastrophic. Written when Mary Shelley was just eighteen, Frankenstein was inspired by the ghost stories and vogue for Gothic literature that fascinated the Romantic writers of her time. She transformed these supernatural elements into an epic parable that warned against the threats to humanity posed by accelerating technological progress. Published for the 200th anniversary, this edition, based on the original 1818 text, explains in detail the turbulent intellectual context in which Shelley was writing, and also investigates how her novel has since become a byword for controversial practices in science and medicine, from manipulating ecosystems to vivisection and genetic modification. As an iconic study of power, creativity, and, ultimately, what it is to be human, Frankenstein continues to shape our thinking in profound ways to this day. Review Ranked #24 in Newsweek's "Top 50 Books You Should Read to Understand the Way We Live Now" "The select bibliography by M.K. Joseph is of benefit to our students."--Dr. Darlene J. Alberts, Ohio Dominican College "This has proved ideal for my Freshman class...compact, inexpensive, clearly printed with margins big enough to scribble in!"--Hilary Kaplan, University of California and Los Angeles "The best general edition of this classic text in terms of text, notes, and general design."--Barry M. Katz, Stanford University "Indispensable for the study of Shelley's Frankenstein."--Eric Rabkin, University of Michigan "Marilyn Butlers introduction was comprehensive and informative and provided a valuable background for my general intro to lit students. The inclusion of the apprndices was also useful and thought-provoking."--Stephanie Wardrop, Colorado State University "The select bibliography by M.K. Joseph is of benefit to our students."--Dr. Darlene J. Alberts, Ohio Dominican College "This has proved ideal for my Freshman class...compact, inexpensive, clearly printed with margins big enough to scribble in!"--Hilary Kaplan, University of California and Los Angeles "The best general edition of this classic text in terms of text, notes, and general design."--Barry M. Katz, Stanford University "Indispensable for the study of Shelley's Frankenstein."--Eric Rabkin, University of Michigan "Marilyn Butlers introduction was comprehensive and informative and provided a valuable background for my general intro to lit students. The inclusion of the apprndices was also useful and thought-provoking."--Stephanie Wardrop, Colorado State University "The most brilliantly comprehensive introduction to Frankenstein that I have ever read. Even if you've read the book ... you have to buy this finely produced OUP annotated edition to enjoy Nick Groom's distillation of Frankenstein's ideas and challenges: especially so as this is the first raw 1818 edition." - Magonia Review "Wonderful." - Dr. Oliver Tearle, Interesting Literature About the Author Nick Groom is Professor in English at the University of Exeter. He has published widely for both academic and popular readerships, and among his many books are The Forger's Shadow (2002), The Union Jack (2006, rev. edn 2017), The Gothic: A Very Short Introduction (2012), The Seasons: A Celebration of the English Year (2014), and editions of a variety of eighteenth-century texts, from crime writing to Shakespeare. He has edited Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto (2014), Matthew Lewis's The Monk (2016), and Ann Radcliffe's The Italian (2017) for the Oxford World's Classics series .