Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley 4 hr 12 min read

An ambitious young scientist discovers the secret of animating lifeless matter, and recoils in horror from the living creature he has made.

Mary Shelley's 1818 'Frankenstein' is the foundational novel of science fiction and one of the greatest of all Gothic tragedies, a tale of creation, responsibility, and monstrous loneliness. Profound, terrifying, endlessly resonant. Read it for the book that arguably began the entire genre, as haunting and humane today as ever.

In its time

Published in 1818, during the 1810s, frankenstein's decade.

Reading it

4 hr 12 min read (a novel-length work, settle in).