Introductory Note

Mary Shelley's introduction on how conceiving the idea of Frankenstein.

In the summer of 1816 we (Percy Shelley and Mary Shelley) visited Switzerland and became neighbors of Lord Byron. It proved a wet, ungenial summer, and incessant rain often confined us for days to the house. Some volumes of ghost stories fell into our hands.

'We will each write a ghost story', said Lord Byron, and his proposition was acceded to. There were four of us. The noble author began a tale, Shelley commenced one founded on the experience of his early life, Polidori had some terrible idea about a skull-headed lady who was so punished for peeping through a key-hole-what to see I forget-something very shocking and wrong of course.

I busied myself to think of a story- a story to rival those who had excited us to the task. One which would speak to the mysterious fears of our nature and awaken thrilling horror- one to make the reader dread to look round, to curdle the blood, and quicken the beatings of the heart.

Many and long were the conversations between Lord Byron and Shelley, to which I was a devout but nearly silent listener. During one of these ,they talked of the experiments of Doctor Darwin. Not thus , after all, would life be given. Perhaps a corpse would be reanimated; galvanism had given token of such things: perhaps the component parts of a creature might be manufactured, brought together, and endued with vital warmth.

Night waned upon this talk, and even the witching hour had gone by before we retired to rest. When a placed my head on the pillow, I did not sleep, nor could I be said to think. My imagination , unbitten, possessed and guided me, gifting the successive images that arose in my mind with a vividness far beyond the usual bounds of reverie. I saw-with shut eyes, but acute mental vision- I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man  stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half-vital motion. Frightful must it be; for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human Endeavour to mock the stupendous mechanism of the creator of the world. His success would terrify the artist; he would rush away from his odious handiwork, horror-stricken. He would hope that, left to itself, the slight spark of life which he had communicated would fade; that this thing which had received such imperfect animation would subside into dead matter, and he might sleep in the belief that the silence of the grave would quench forever the transient existence of the hideous corpse which he had looked upon as the cradle of life. He sleeps; but he is awakened ;he opens his eyes; behold, the horrid thing stands at his bedside, opening his curtains and looking on him with yellow, watery, but speculative eyes.

I opened mine in terror. The idea so possessed my mind that a thrill of fear ran through me, and I wished to exchange the ghastly image of my fancy for the realities around me. Swift as light and as cheering was the idea that broke in upon me. I have found it! What terrified me will terrify others; and I need only describe the spectre which had haunted my midnight pillow. On the morrow I announced that I had thought of a story! I began that day with the words, 'It was on a dreary night of November,' making only a transcript of the grim terrors of my waking dream.

                                                                                                                                     M . W . S

London, 15 October 1831