Very scarce first revised edition of Mary Shelley's genre-defining gothic, horror novel. First edition thus with two engraved illustrations and extensively revised text by Shelley, including a new introduction. This the first representation of "the monster" in illustrated form.
This was the first version of the text to include the origin story of the work, in which the guests gathered at Villa Diodati in Switzerland in 1816 were challenged by Lord Byron to all write a ghost story.
The 1831 version of the novel, as here, was a more polished production with a more developed back story, characters and the adoption of a more fatalistic, sympathetic tone, shifting the emphasis from Victor's personal evil and free will to the inevitability of fate and the role of society in forming his person, and thus the "monster."
The 1831 version is almost universally that utilized in modern printings and retellings of the story, thus the first edition of Frankenstein "as we now have it."
Often bound with Schiller's The Ghost-Seer, other examples of the Brockden-paired edition have been located as well, see Doyle [2024] where a Brockden bound example in an inferior state sold for $7,300 with commissions.
Shelley, Mary. Frankenstien. Or, The Modern Prometheus. By the Author of The Last Man, Perkin Warbeck, &c. &c. Revised, Corrected, and Illustrated with a New Introduction, by the Author. London. Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley. 1831. 202pp.
[bound with]
Brown, Charles Brockden. Edgar Huntly; or The Sleep Walker. London. Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley. 1831. 258pp.
A very good copy, bound in half leather, with signatures very slightly forward in the binding, but generally solid, with slight tenderness to the front hinge, and very light foxing.
