Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (Essay Date 1818)

SOURCE: Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft. Preface to Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, pp. 1-2. London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, 1831.

In the following preface to her 1818 edition of Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, Shelley introduces her work, touching on its purpose and how it was conceived.

The event on which this fiction is founded has been supposed, by Dr. Darwin and some of the physiological writers of Germany, as not of impossible occurrence. I shall not be supposed as according the remotest degree of serious faith to such an imagination; yet, in assuming it as the basis of a work of fancy, I have not considered myself as merely weaving a series of supernatural terrors. The event on which the interest of the story depends is exempt from the disadvantages of a mere tale of spectres or enchantment. It was recommended by...