Yet for Mary Shelley, the task at first proved fruitless. "
Have you thought of a story" I was asked each morning, and each morning I was forced to reply with a mortifying negative." Then a conversation between her husband and Byron about galvanism and experiments of regenerating life with electrical charges started her thinking: "Perhaps a corpse would be re-animated ... perhaps the component parts of a creature might be manufactured, brought together, and endued with vital warmth." This stimulus, together with a frightening dream that same night of a "pale student" who creates such a re-combined monster, set Shelley on course. "On the morrow I announced that I had
thought of a story. I began that day with the words,
It was on a dreary night in November..."
Frankenstein, like the monster created by the book's eponymous protagonist, has since its first publication in 1818 taken on a life of its own. In the introduction to the 1831 edition, Shelley wrote: "Once again I bid my hideous progeny to go forth and prosper." She could have had no idea of how much it would prosper. The name itself has entered the vocabulary as synonymous with monster--though in fact Frankenstein was the name of the creator, not the monster.
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