- The Annotated Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley ed. by Susan J. Wolfson and Ronald L. Levao
Although a trade book (and an excellent one) rather than a scholarly edition, this new Annotated Frankenstein needs to be owned or at least read by all who do scholarship on the novel, for it has much to offer every student of Mary Shelley and of her famous novel (you should order a copy for your library). Not the least of its contributions to Mary Shelley studies are nearly one hundred beautifully represented color illustrations (even showing the aged and sepia tone of the pages from old editions and black-and-white engravings). Portraits of the Shelley Circle intermingle with images that illuminate the background and text of the novel as well as its adaptations in theater and film. The illustrations themselves are worth the price of the volume. Two illustrations of particular note are from Princeton University Library copies of Dublin editions of Milton: the verso of the title page of Paradise Lost bearing Percy’s gift inscription to Mary Godwin on June 6, 1815 (p. 49); and the title page of the Shelleys’ Paradise Regained with the inscription of “Lady Savile” (p. 52), teasing us out of thought about the origin of the name of Walton’s sister, “Mrs. Saville.” As the editors make plain throughout their extensive annotations, Milton is central to the title page and text of Frankenstein.
Readers of this Annotated Frankenstein will experience delight and instruction as they encounter the 1818 text in a large-point size with much white space or “leading” on each page, somehow replicating the experience of reading the first edition of 1818 in which there were only about 140 words to each page. There is a different aesthetic experience in reading such an open text (rather than a paperback reprint where crammed words on the page force the reader to rush or to miss nuances), and the editors’ decision to run footnotes as “side notes” increases the reader’s awareness of the subtleties of the text. Indeed, the experience is not dissimilar to that of reading Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner with the glosses next to the text. In both cases, linear reading is disrupted, but to the credit rather than the debit of the reader, who is forced to savor the words of the novel in new ways. And the editors have the space and luxury to provide extensive information: witness more than four column inches devoted to Erasmus Darwin in the first note to the Preface (p. 61).
The editors’ notes actually point the reader to many motifs in Frankenstein. Even though I had read the novel dozens of times (and at least five times aloud, word for word and comma for comma), Wolfson and Levao made me aware of many patterns that I had missed in Mary Shelley’s text. For example, Walton’s reference to Victor’s “wretched” condition before being restored to “animation” (see p. 80, nn.29–30) is used by the editors to ring numerous changes through the text that link Victor to his “animated” monster or “wretch”—thereby providing all the more evidence of the doppelgänger at work in this [End Page 138] novel: Walton is to Victor just as Victor is to the Monster. These notes are not the only means to demonstrate Mary Shelley’s artistry in crafting the characters and scenes in her book; equally important are the many illustrations of Mont Blanc and the Mer de Glace that provide the editors the visual evidence to claim correctly that “in the novel’s symbolic design [Mary Shelley] sets this ‘Sea of Ice’ as mirror to the polar sea in the frame narrative, where Creature and Creator will again converge” (p. 169, n.4).
Reading this edition yields even more appreciations of the text of the novel, including its “multiple versions of parental care and carelessness” (p. 89, n.12), the keyword of...