"Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful"

- Frankenstein

2018 marks the bicentennial anniversary of Mary Shelley’s greatest literary success: Frankenstein. First published anonymously on 1 January 1818, the novel had been written two years prior, when Shelley was just eighteen. Now, 200 years later, the story of an ambitious young medical student and his re-animated being, which many argue was the first work of science fiction, has inspired countless film, theatre and literary creations, and introduced us to one of the most well-known and iconic characters of all time.

The story of Frankenstein began in the summer of 1816, when a trip to Geneva accompanied by the likes of Lord Byron and Mary’s soon-to-be-husband and famed Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, lead to the former challenging his fellow guests to each write a ghost story. Inspired by a recent nightmare, eighteen-year-old Mary Shelley began to write the first draft of what would later become Frankenstein.

Encouraged by her husband to expand her story, Mary published her work anonymously in 1818. It was not until 1823 that the first edition of Frankenstein to be accredited to her name was published. The novel received both positive and negative reviews, having been criticised by many who considered the idea of a man bringing a corpse to life blasphemous and the havoc that ensues later on far too horrific for a woman to write. When it was revealed that such a tale's author was female, many critics were quick to reject the book. An excerpt from The British Critic newspaper read that the author’s gender was ‘the prevailing fault of the novel’, and so it was to be ‘dismissed without further comment’.


In spite of the controversy at the time of its publication, Frankenstein has since become one of the most famous Gothic stories to date. The success of the 1931 film adaptation helped to bring the story into popular culture, introducing the infamous portrayal of the monster as having a flat-topped head and bolts in its neck. While Shelley is often overlooked in terms of her contribution to the science-fiction genre, her best-selling novel is still, 200 years later, a celebrated literary triumph.