Focus on Mary Shelley

by

In this post:
– The movie
– New non-fiction books about Mary Shelley scheduled for 2018
– Frankenstein Events

The year 2018 marks the 200th anniversary of the publication of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or The Modern Prometheus. We can look forward to a global celebration of Shelley’s work with a variety of exhibitions, research projects, scientific demonstrations, competitions, festivals, art projects, and publications.

Mary Shelley began writing Frankenstein in the summer of 1816 in in Cologny, near Geneva. She stayed there at the Villa Diodati, together with Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron, his (ex)-lover Claire Clairmont and Byron’s physician John Polidori. During the cold and rainy summer of 1816, the group amused themselves during the evenings by reading ghost stories aloud, and finally Byron proposed that they each attempt to write one.

Here is an audio version of the novel: https://archive.org/details/frankenstein_cs_librivox

The Movie

The events that eventually lead Mary Shelley to write her novel are detailed in the movie “Mary Shelley”. It is scheduled to arrive at the theatres around mid-2018. Actors include Elle Fanning  (Mary Shelley), Douglas Booth (Percy Bysshe Shelley), Tom Sturridge (Lord Byron), and Stephen Dillane (William Godwin), Maisie Williams (Isabel Baxter), and Joanne Froggatt (Clara Mary Jane Clairmont).

View some photos here.

New non-fiction books (in print or as ebook) about Mary Shelley scheduled for 2018

  • A Political Biography of Mary Wollstonecraft by Claire Grogan
  • In Search of Mary Shelley: The Girl Who Wrote Frankenstein by Fiona Sampson
  • Making the Monster: The Science Behind Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
    by Kathryn Harkup
  • Frankenstein and the Birth of Science by Joel Levy
  • Frankenstein – How A Monster Became an Icon – The Science and Enduring Allure of Mary Shelley`s Creation by Sidney Perkowitz and Eddy Von Mueller
  • Mary’s Monster: Love, Madness and How Mary Shelley Created Frankenstein by Lita Judge
  • Mary, Who Wrote Frankenstein by Linda Bailey
  • Mary Shelley: The Strange True Tale of Frankenstein’s Creator by Catherine Reef
  • Mary Shelley by Miranda Seymour

Frankenstein Events

Frankenstein … (Puppet Show)
27. January 2018, 20:00 p.m.
Munich City Museum, Sankt-Jakobs-Platz 1, 80331 Munich, Germany
http://figurentheater-gfp.de/frankenstein-2018.php

Interdisciplinary Frankenstein
Panel with Sara Guyer (UW Madison English), Nasser Mufti (UIC English), and Tim Murphy (UIC School of Medicine)
27 February 2018, 12:30 pm – 2:00 pm
UIC Institute for the Humanitie, 701 South Morgan, Stevenson Hall Lower Level, Chicago, IL 60607 United States
https://huminst.uic.edu/ifth/events/frankenstein-@200/2018/02/27/default-calendar/interdisciplinary-frankenstein

Frankenstein: A Multidisciplinary Conference 2018
14 June 2018
Northumbria University Law School and Department of Social Sciences
Business & Law Building, City Campus East, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne NE1 8ST, UK
https://www.northumbria.ac.uk/about-us/news-events/events/2018/06/frankenstein-conference-2018/

Symposium “Northanger Abbey” and “Frankenstein”: 200 Years of Horror
14. –  17. June 2018
Carrboro and Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA
https://janeaustensummer.org/2017/09/06/introducing-the-2018-jane-austen-summer-program-northanger-abbey-and-frankenstein/

Frankenreads
Frankenreads is an NEH-funded initiative of the Keats-Shelley Association of America and partners to hold a series of events and initiatives in honor of the 200th anniversary of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, featuring especially an international series of readings of the full text of the novel on Halloween 2018.
http://frankenreads.org/