Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus. [By M. W. Shelley.] by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

58, which contains the disbound pages of original Notebooks C1 and C2.

Only about 12% of that fair copy is now extant in the form of Bodleian MS Abinger c. From mid-April to mid-May 1817, the draft of the two-volume novel was transformed into three volumes when the Shelleys prepared in several small soft cover notebooks a fair copy for prospective publishers and, ultimately, the printer.

Missing from it are the four introductory letters of Captain Walton to his sister Margaret Saville and part of Chapter 1. The extant draft of Frankenstein contains 87% of the final text of the novel as published in 1818. Those who choose to view the notebooks in their original page order will note the presence of two leaves unrelated to Frankenstein except by physical juxtaposition, the text of a fragment in Mary Shelley’s hand concerning the Persian king, Cyrus the Great (MS Abinger c.56 and MS Abinger c.57 ). The draft of Frankenstein can therefore be accessed in S-GA in three different forms: (1) in the virtually reconstituted form of original Notebooks A and B (2) in the physical sequence of MS Abinger c.56 and c.57 and (3) in the linear chapter sequence of the two-volume draft as presented below. Complicating the textual condition of the draft material: the division of pages between Notebooks A and B does not correspond with their disbound form as manuscripts c.56 and c.57, which instead echo the divisions between Volumes I and II of the two-volume novel. In doing so, she used two notebooks (A and B) whose disbound pages survive as Bodleian MS Abinger c.56 and c.57. Shelley (PBS), into the draft of a two-volume novel in 1816-1817.

She recast this early work, with the collaboration of Percy B. MWS’s own original story and further early drafts are no longer extant.

Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus. [By M. W. Shelley.] by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley