Wednesday, October 18, 2017

Greetings Infomaniacs,

There's some interesting history behind the writing of horror story Frankenstein and its author Mary Shelley. Let's get right to the facts...

Enjoy!

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WHO SAID IT?
QUOTE: "We make up horrors to help us cope with the real ones."

HINT: (1947- ), is an American author of contemporary horror, supernatural fiction, suspense, science fiction, and fantasy.

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RANDOM TIDBITS
Mary Shelley's teenage years were eventful, to say the least. At age 16, she ran away with the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. Over the next two years, she gave birth to two children. In 1816, the couple traveled to Switzerland and visited Lord Byron at Villa Diodati. While there, 18-year-old Mary started Frankenstein. It was published in 1818, when she was 20 years old.

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Before she started Frankenstein, Mary gave birth to a daughter, Clara, who died six weeks later. (In fact, only one of Mary's four children lived to adulthood.) Soon after the baby died, she wrote in her journal, "Dream that my little baby came to life again-that it had only been cold & that we rubbed it by the fire & it lived-I awake & find no baby-I think about the little thing all day."

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Frankenstein was the name of the scientist, not the monster. In the novel, Victor Frankenstein is the scientist. The monster remains unnamed and is referred to as "monster," "creature," "demon," and "it."

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Mary said she made up the name "Frankenstein." However, Frankenstein is a German name that means Stone of the Franks. What's more, historian Radu Florescu claimed that the Shelleys visited Castle Frankenstein on a journey up the Rhine River.

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Frankenstein was first published anonymously. It was dedicated to William Godwin, Mary's father, and Percy Shelley wrote the preface. Because of these connections, many assumed that Shelley was the author. This myth continued even after Frankenstein was reprinted in Mary's name.

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In penning her gothic novel, Shelley was writing the first major science fiction novel, as well as inventing the concept of the "mad scientist" and helping establish what would become horror fiction. The influence of the book in popular culture is so huge that the term "Frankenstein" has entered common speech to mean something unnatural and horrendous.




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WHO SAID IT?
QUOTE: "We make up horrors to help us cope with the real ones."

ANSWER: Stephen King.