FRANKENSTEIN

The first edition of Frankenstein, in three volumes, was first published anonymously by the London printers Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor and Jones in 1818. The second edition, a reprint of the first, appeared in two volumes in 1823, this time bearing Mary Shelley's name. The third edition of 1831 was published as the ninth in Colburn and Bentley's Standard Novels series. The Frankenstein text printed here follows this third edition. Mary Shelley made extensive revisions for the 1831 publication, particularly in the first two chapters, which she thought 'unworthy of the rest of the narration'. Thus the practice has been followed here of printing that version of the text embodying all the final revisions of the author. Frankenstein's originally heavy punctuation has been considerably lightened and sometimes omitted, to conform to the requirements of a modern reading rhythm. Double quotation marks have been altered to single throughout.

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