Podcast appearances and mentions of mary wollstonecraft godwin

In 1816, 18-year-old Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (later Shelley) birthed science fiction during a rainy vacation on Lake Geneva. Inspired by a vision of a man crouched beside the corpse he reanimated, Frankenstein warned of what happens when man tries to play God. Two centuries later, the monsters are real, and they're called Musk, Altman, and Zuckerberg. Today's tech titans, like Frankenstein's Victor, race to build superintelligent machines in their image: soulless wannabe-gods with devastating reach. Gil Duran, of the Nerd Reich newsletter, connects this to A.I. worship, quoting a billionaire obsessed with “creating God” through algorithms. M.I.T.'s annotated Frankenstein likens Victor's horror to Oppenheimer's nuclear regret. We've entered a new atomic age, but instead of bombs, it's information weapons and hacked minds. As Pulitzer-nominated journalist Carole Cadwalladr warns, this is what a digital coup looks like. A.I. is trained to replace journalists, strip away privacy, and deepen inequality, just as Gaslit Nation has warned since 2018. What's the answer? Community. Skill-sharing. Nature. The real world. Jack Welch, once worshipped like Musk is today, gutted G.E. with fear-based leadership. Now he's a cautionary tale. So will today's tech gods be. Mary Shelley saw it coming. “Frightful must it be,” she wrote. We agree. But there's power in human connection, in rejecting the machine's illusions. Frankenstein's monster was abandoned. Let's not abandon each other. Join our resilience salons. Find your people. Build the future together. Want to enjoy Gaslit Nation ad-free? Join our community of listeners for bonus shows, ad-free episodes, exclusive Q&A sessions, our group chat, invites to live events like our Monday political salons at 4pm ET over Zoom, and more! Sign up at Patreon.com/Gaslit! Show Notes   The song you heard in this week's episode is “Unspoken Word” by Evrette Allen: https://soundcloud.com/user-726164627/unspoken-word-mix-13/s-GEvlnfQnmh4?si=954f31de09d644948d51a225224bd7ba&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing   Nerd Reich: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/02/12/the-strange-and-twisted-life-of-frankenstein   After two hundred years, are we ready for the truth about Mary Shelley's novel? https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/02/12/the-strange-and-twisted-life-of-frankenstein   Astronomers have determined the exact hour that Mary Shelley thought of Frankenstein. https://lithub.com/astronomers-have-determined-the-exact-hour-that-mary-shelley-thought-of-frankenstein/   AI's Energy Demands Are Out of Control. Welcome to the Internet's Hyper-Consumption Era Generative artificial intelligence tools, now part of the everyday user experience online, are causing stress on local power grids and mass water evaporation. https://www.wired.com/story/ai-energy-demands-water-impact-internet-hyper-consumption-era/   Short-term profits and long-term consequences — did Jack Welch break capitalism? https://www.npr.org/2022/06/01/1101505691/short-term-profits-and-long-term-consequences-did-jack-welch-break-capitalism   Carole Cadwalladr TED Talk: This Is What a Digital Coup Looks Like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZOoT8AbkNE   Self-styled prophets are claiming they have "awakened" chatbots and accessed the secrets of the universe through ChatGPT https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/ai-spiritual-delusions-destroying-human-relationships-1235330175/

Today I talked to Heather Redmond about her new novel Death and the Visitors (Kensington, 2024). In this second Regency-era mystery featuring Mary Godwin Shelley, the author of Frankenstein, the sixteen-year-old heroine (still Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin at this point in her life) and her stepsister and close lifetime companion, Jane Clairmont, are facing even greater penury and discomfort than in the first book, Death and the Sisters (2023), as a result of their parents' profligacy and the absence of Mary's older half-sister, banished to Wales because of her excessive attachment to the married poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and thus unable to help Jane and Mary with their chores. The girls live in a run-down house in a disreputable London neighborhood not far from Newgate Prison and the Smithfield meat market, where they spend their days watching their parents' bookshop. Their father, an illustrious political thinker and writer, doesn't earn enough to support five children and a wife. As a result, he has fallen into the grip of moneylenders, and creditors show up on his doorstep with some regularity, embarrassing him and his family. When a group of rich Russians arrives, determined to meet the daughter of the renowned Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary's father persuades one of them to support the Godwin publishing enterprise with a gift of diamonds. But the day after their scheduled meeting, a body identified as the Russian donor is pulled out of the Thames River. Mary sets out with her sister and Shelley to solve the mystery of the Russian's murder, hoping to retrieve the diamonds and buy herself and her family some time. This is the Regency as we have come to know it from the novels of C.S. Harris and Andrea Penrose, among others: opulent on the surface but full of grit and poverty behind the glittering façade. How closely Shelley, Jane, and Mary resemble their historical selves is uncertain, but it's a rollicking good tale and deserves to be enjoyed on its own terms. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Today I talked to Heather Redmond about her new novel Death and the Visitors (Kensington, 2024). In this second Regency-era mystery featuring Mary Godwin Shelley, the author of Frankenstein, the sixteen-year-old heroine (still Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin at this point in her life) and her stepsister and close lifetime companion, Jane Clairmont, are facing even greater penury and discomfort than in the first book, Death and the Sisters (2023), as a result of their parents' profligacy and the absence of Mary's older half-sister, banished to Wales because of her excessive attachment to the married poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and thus unable to help Jane and Mary with their chores. The girls live in a run-down house in a disreputable London neighborhood not far from Newgate Prison and the Smithfield meat market, where they spend their days watching their parents' bookshop. Their father, an illustrious political thinker and writer, doesn't earn enough to support five children and a wife. As a result, he has fallen into the grip of moneylenders, and creditors show up on his doorstep with some regularity, embarrassing him and his family. When a group of rich Russians arrives, determined to meet the daughter of the renowned Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary's father persuades one of them to support the Godwin publishing enterprise with a gift of diamonds. But the day after their scheduled meeting, a body identified as the Russian donor is pulled out of the Thames River. Mary sets out with her sister and Shelley to solve the mystery of the Russian's murder, hoping to retrieve the diamonds and buy herself and her family some time. This is the Regency as we have come to know it from the novels of C.S. Harris and Andrea Penrose, among others: opulent on the surface but full of grit and poverty behind the glittering façade. How closely Shelley, Jane, and Mary resemble their historical selves is uncertain, but it's a rollicking good tale and deserves to be enjoyed on its own terms. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Today I talked to Heather Redmond about her new novel Death and the Visitors (Kensington, 2024). In this second Regency-era mystery featuring Mary Godwin Shelley, the author of Frankenstein, the sixteen-year-old heroine (still Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin at this point in her life) and her stepsister and close lifetime companion, Jane Clairmont, are facing even greater penury and discomfort than in the first book, Death and the Sisters (2023), as a result of their parents' profligacy and the absence of Mary's older half-sister, banished to Wales because of her excessive attachment to the married poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and thus unable to help Jane and Mary with their chores. The girls live in a run-down house in a disreputable London neighborhood not far from Newgate Prison and the Smithfield meat market, where they spend their days watching their parents' bookshop. Their father, an illustrious political thinker and writer, doesn't earn enough to support five children and a wife. As a result, he has fallen into the grip of moneylenders, and creditors show up on his doorstep with some regularity, embarrassing him and his family. When a group of rich Russians arrives, determined to meet the daughter of the renowned Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary's father persuades one of them to support the Godwin publishing enterprise with a gift of diamonds. But the day after their scheduled meeting, a body identified as the Russian donor is pulled out of the Thames River. Mary sets out with her sister and Shelley to solve the mystery of the Russian's murder, hoping to retrieve the diamonds and buy herself and her family some time. This is the Regency as we have come to know it from the novels of C.S. Harris and Andrea Penrose, among others: opulent on the surface but full of grit and poverty behind the glittering façade. How closely Shelley, Jane, and Mary resemble their historical selves is uncertain, but it's a rollicking good tale and deserves to be enjoyed on its own terms. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/historical-fiction

Sumanth Prabhaker is the editor-in-chief of Orion and the founding editor of Madra Press. He earned an MFA in creative writing at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, where he was an editor for the journal Ecotone. Founded in 1982, Orion has evolved as a magazine over the years from the quieter, reverential environmental sensitivity that continues to distinguish it into also a wider awareness of global injustices that especially impact the Global South. In this episode, three essays were discussed that under his leadership, Sumanth Prabhaker nurtured into existence over a span that sometimes stretched into years. First among them is “How the Lark Got Her Crest” by Marianne Jay Erhardt from the Summer 2023 issue. It works from the slightest of bases, the few lines of Aesop's fable about a lark, into a rather profound piece about how one might bury one's father “in your head' like the lark does. Language and honoring one's parent becomes the grounding in this case. Second up, “The Other Bibles” by Katrina Vanderberg from the Spring 2024 issue began as almost a lark: why not include a book review of The Bible in a special issue devoted to religious rituals? The essay is at once a memorial to a husband who died of AIDS as a result of poorly monitored blood transfusions meant to help treat his hemophilia, as well as exploring the spiritual ecology of texts that come to us via illustrations in Bibles or the handiwork of the Earth itself. Third, the episode concludes by discussing “Natural Selection” by Erica Berry from the Winter 2023 issue. A Tinder ad about dating practices led into a piece on romance and even four Romance novels also written during the Year Without a Summer in 1916 when a volcanic eruption in Indonesia caused famine and disease and led, among other output, to Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin and her husband Percy Bysshe Shelley setting to work on Frankenstein. Dan Hill, PhD, is the author of ten books and leads Sensory Logic, Inc. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Sumanth Prabhaker is the editor-in-chief of Orion and the founding editor of Madra Press. He earned an MFA in creative writing at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, where he was an editor for the journal Ecotone. Founded in 1982, Orion has evolved as a magazine over the years from the quieter, reverential environmental sensitivity that continues to distinguish it into also a wider awareness of global injustices that especially impact the Global South. In this episode, three essays were discussed that under his leadership, Sumanth Prabhaker nurtured into existence over a span that sometimes stretched into years. First among them is “How the Lark Got Her Crest” by Marianne Jay Erhardt from the Summer 2023 issue. It works from the slightest of bases, the few lines of Aesop's fable about a lark, into a rather profound piece about how one might bury one's father “in your head' like the lark does. Language and honoring one's parent becomes the grounding in this case. Second up, “The Other Bibles” by Katrina Vanderberg from the Spring 2024 issue began as almost a lark: why not include a book review of The Bible in a special issue devoted to religious rituals? The essay is at once a memorial to a husband who died of AIDS as a result of poorly monitored blood transfusions meant to help treat his hemophilia, as well as exploring the spiritual ecology of texts that come to us via illustrations in Bibles or the handiwork of the Earth itself. Third, the episode concludes by discussing “Natural Selection” by Erica Berry from the Winter 2023 issue. A Tinder ad about dating practices led into a piece on romance and even four Romance novels also written during the Year Without a Summer in 1916 when a volcanic eruption in Indonesia caused famine and disease and led, among other output, to Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin and her husband Percy Bysshe Shelley setting to work on Frankenstein. Dan Hill, PhD, is the author of ten books and leads Sensory Logic, Inc. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

Sumanth Prabhaker is the editor-in-chief of Orion and the founding editor of Madra Press. He earned an MFA in creative writing at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, where he was an editor for the journal Ecotone. Founded in 1982, Orion has evolved as a magazine over the years from the quieter, reverential environmental sensitivity that continues to distinguish it into also a wider awareness of global injustices that especially impact the Global South. In this episode, three essays were discussed that under his leadership, Sumanth Prabhaker nurtured into existence over a span that sometimes stretched into years. First among them is “How the Lark Got Her Crest” by Marianne Jay Erhardt from the Summer 2023 issue. It works from the slightest of bases, the few lines of Aesop's fable about a lark, into a rather profound piece about how one might bury one's father “in your head' like the lark does. Language and honoring one's parent becomes the grounding in this case. Second up, “The Other Bibles” by Katrina Vanderberg from the Spring 2024 issue began as almost a lark: why not include a book review of The Bible in a special issue devoted to religious rituals? The essay is at once a memorial to a husband who died of AIDS as a result of poorly monitored blood transfusions meant to help treat his hemophilia, as well as exploring the spiritual ecology of texts that come to us via illustrations in Bibles or the handiwork of the Earth itself. Third, the episode concludes by discussing “Natural Selection” by Erica Berry from the Winter 2023 issue. A Tinder ad about dating practices led into a piece on romance and even four Romance novels also written during the Year Without a Summer in 1916 when a volcanic eruption in Indonesia caused famine and disease and led, among other output, to Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin and her husband Percy Bysshe Shelley setting to work on Frankenstein. Dan Hill, PhD, is the author of ten books and leads Sensory Logic, Inc. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies

Découvrez l'abonnement "Au Coeur de l'Histoire +" et accédez à des heures de programmes, des archives inédites, des épisodes en avant-première et une sélection d'épisodes sur des grandes thématiques. Profitez de cette offre sur Apple Podcasts dès aujourd'hui ! Saviez-vous que le premier roman de science-fiction a été écrit par une femme ? Mary Shelley a donné vie à Frankenstein à seulement 19 ans ! Dans un récit inédit, Virginie Girod vous raconte l'histoire de cette femme de lettres pas comme les autres. Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin naît hors mariage à Londres en 1797 : ses parents, des intellectuels, croient en l'amour libre et à l'égalité des hommes et des femmes. A une époque où on éduque les filles pour qu'elles deviennent de bonnes épouses, la jeune Mary est élevée pour penser par elle-même. Parmi les fréquentations de son père se trouve le poète Percy Shelley, un autre anticonformiste. C'est le premier amour de Mary. On raconte que leur premier rendez-vous a lieu sur la tombe de la mère de la jeune femme ! Le père de Mary ne voit pas cette liaison d'un bon œil. Et pour cause : Percy est déjà marié ! À seulement 17 ans, Mary, sa belle-sœur Claire et Percy s'enfuient. En six semaines, ils traversent l'Europe sur plus de 1 300 km. Fauchée et enceinte, Mary rentre en Angleterre avec pour ambition de repartir au plus vite. C'est chose faite deux ans plus tard. Percy, Mary, Claire et son nouvel amant, le célèbre poète Lord Byron, se retrouvent au bord du lac Léman. Le cadre est idéal, mais la météo est désastreuse. Pour passer le temps, les écrivains se lancent dans un défi littéraire : écrire une ghost story, une histoire de fantômes, un sous-genre du fantastique alors très à la mode. Alors que les poètes s'embourbent dans une prose qu'ils maîtrisent mal, Mary Shelley s'appuie sur les dernières avancées scientifiques pour construire une intrigue plausible au regard du fol espoir que les premières expériences électriques font naître. Dans la nouvelle qu'elle écrit, c'est le courant électrique qui donne vie à Frankenstein, un être composé à partir de morceaux de cadavres. Mais la créature échappe à son créateur... Publié une première fois anonymement, ce qui est devenu un roman n'est attribué à Mary Shelley qu'en 1823. Longtemps réduite à la femme du poète Percy Shelley, il faudra presque deux cents ans pour que son génie littéraire ne soit reconnu à sa juste valeur. Thèmes abordés : Frankenstein, Science-Fiction, Science, Littérature "Au cœur de l'histoire" est un podcast Europe 1 Studio- Présentation : Virginie Girod - Ecriture : Sandrine Brugot- Production : Caroline Garnier et Camille Bichler- Réalisation : Clément Ibrahim- Composition de la musique originale : Julien Tharaud - Rédaction et Diffusion : Nathan Laporte- Communication : Marie Corpet- Visuel : Sidonie Mangin Sources et ressources en ligne Cathy Bernheim, Mary Shelley : qui êtes-vous ?, 1988 https://www.rtbf.be/article/frankenstein-cette-experience-desastreuse-en-1803-qui-a-inspire-le-roman-culte-11080195 https://gallica.bnf.fr/blog/13122018/1818-lexil-italien-de-lord-byron-et-percy-shelley https://books.openedition.org/pup/9576

Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, o Mary Shelley (Londres, 1797- 1851) formó parte del círculo de poetas románticos que frecuentaba Lord Byron. Es la autora de 'Frankenstein o el moderno Prometeo', 'Lodore', 'Falkner y la futurista' o 'El último hombre'. 'Mathilda' fue escrita entre 1819 y 1820, pero no fue publicada hasta 1959. 

Mary Shelley in Bath. Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin finished writing Frankenstein while lodging in Bath and attending lectures on electricity and galvanism. We visit the Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution and the recently opened Mary Shelley's House of Frankenstein with the neuroscientist Anil Seth (author of Being You) and the poet and biographer Fiona Sampson (In Search of Mary Shelley), discussing Romantic literature, early nineteenth-century science and the mystery of consciousness. Penguin Classics edition of Frankenstein by Mary Shelleyhttps://www.penguin.co.uk/books/55587/frankenstein-by-mary-shelley-ed-maurice-hindle/9780141439471https://apple.co/47HB0DU Penguin audiobook edition of Frankenstein, read by Peter Noble and Colin Salmonhttps://www.penguin.co.uk/books/55587/frankenstein-by-shelley-mary/9780241422625https://apple.co/3us6tvv Anil Sethhttps://www.anilseth.com/ Being You by Anil Seth (Faber)https://www.faber.co.uk/product/9780571337729-being-you/https://apple.co/40QlhQQAudiobook: https://www.faber.co.uk/product/9780571360550-being-you/https://apple.co/46t21tQ Fiona Sampsonhttps://twitter.com/FionaRSampson In Search of Mary Shelley by Fiona Sampson (Profile)https://profilebooks.com/work/in-search-of-mary-shelley-the-girl-who-wrote-frankenstein/https://apple.co/49T6f0AAudiobook: https://www.wfhowes.co.uk/title-details/9781528851244https://apple.co/46t274G Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institutionhttps://www.brlsi.org/ Mary Shelley's House of Frankensteinhttps://www.houseoffrankenstein.com/ St Mary's Churchyardhttps://www.stmaryschurchyard.com/ Presenter – Henry Eliot: https://www.henryeliot.co.uk/Producer – Andrea Rangecroft: https://www.andrearangecroft.co.uk/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Join us for the literary giant, best known for her masterpiece “Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus”, Mary Shelley! Or as she was known during this time, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin. Sources: Byron, Lord, et al. Lord Byron: Selected Poems. The Folio Society, 2013. Gordon, Charlotte. Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft & Mary Shelley. Windmill Books, 2016. Shelley, Percy Bysshe, et al. Percy Bysshe Shelley: The Major Works. Oxford University Press, 2009.

Alison and Timothy discuss The Year Without a Summer – 1816 – which found Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (soon to be Shelley), Claire Clairmont, Dr. Polidori, Percy Shelley, and Lord Byron together in Switzerland. The eruption of Mount Tamboro in Indonesia caused clouds of ash to darken the skies over Europe. These remarkable events birthed the creation of Polidori's story, The Vampyre (which inspired Dracula), and the incredible novel, Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley.If you would like to help us continue to make Strange Familiars, get bonus content, t-shirts, stickers, and more rewards, you can become a patron: http://www.patreon.com/StrangeFamiliarsIf you would prefer a one-time payment to help us out, here is a PayPal.me link - you can change the number 25 in the URL to any amount: https://www.paypal.me/timothyrenner/25Our Strange Familiars / Lost Grave etsy shop has art, books, patches, t-shirts, and more ... including original art done for Strange Familiars: https://www.etsy.com/shop/lostgraveStrange Familiars t-shirts and other designs are available here: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/strange-familiars?ref_id=14000Episode 324 notes and links:The artwork for this episode is The Funeral of Shelley by Louis Edouard Fournier.Riverbend Comics: https://www.riverbendcomics.comRiverbend Comics Instagram: @riverbendcomics90 Days to the Perfect Puppy: https://perfectpuppies.sithappens.us/90-daysKarmic Garden: https://www.etsy.com/shop/KarmicGardenStrange Familiars Curiosity of the Week #47: Uranium GlassYou can purchase one or more of these glasses at our etsy shop: https://www.etsy.com/listing/1242172762/uranium-glass-strange-familiarsTimothy's books: https://www.amazon.com/Timothy-Renner/e/B072X44SD5Strange Familiars ‘Awoken Tree' t-shirts are available in our Etsy shop: https://www.etsy.com/listing/739690857/strange-familiars-podcast-awoken-treeAlison: https://www.etsy.com/shop/odpeacockChad's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNB7MSJ2F1SRBPcQsEFLnvg (make sure to subscribe to Chad's channel, Ruck Rabbit Outdoors.)Chad's etsy shop: https://www.etsy.com/shop/RuckRabbitOutdoorsTo help with the Capuchin Day Center's work with the homeless you can donate here: https://www.capuchindaycentre.ieand here: https://www.cskdetroit.orgContact us via email at: strangefamiliarspodcast@gmail.comhttp://www.facebook.com/strangefamiliarsJoin the Strange Familiars Gathering group on facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/strangefamiliars/instagram: @strangefamiliarshttp://www.strangefamiliars.comIntro and background music by Stone Breath. You can find more at http://stonebreath.bandcamp.comThe closing song is Up-Hill by Timothy.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/strange-familiars/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

We've all heard the story of "Frankenstein's Monster." A bat shit crazy scientist wants to reanimate dead tissue and basically create a fucking zombie baby… BECAUSE THAT'S HOW YOU GET FUCKING ZOMBIES! Anyway, Dr. Frankenstein and his trusty assistant, Igor, set off to bring a bunch of random, dead body parts together, throw some lightning on the bugger and bring this new, puzzle piece of a quasi-human back to "life." At first, the reanimated corpse seems somewhat ordinary, but then flips his shit and starts terrorizing and doing what I can only imagine REANIMATED ZOMBIES FUCKING DO!    Mary Shelley was born Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin in Somers Town, London, in 1797. She was the second child of the feminist philosopher, educator, and writer Mary Wollstonecraft and the first child of the philosopher, novelist, and journalist William Godwin.  So, she was brought into this world by some smart fucking people. Mary's mother died of puerperal fever shortly after Mary was born. Puerperal fever is an infectious, sometimes fatal, disease of childbirth; until the mid-19th century, this dreaded, then-mysterious illness could sweep through a hospital maternity ward and kill most new mothers. Today strict aseptic hospital techniques have made the condition uncommon in most parts of the world, except in unusual circumstances such as illegally induced abortion. Her father, William, was left to bring up Mary and her older half-sister, Fanny Imlay, Mary's mother's child by the American speculator Gilbert Imlay. A year after her mother's death, Godwin published his Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, which he intended as a sincere and compassionate tribute. However, the Memoirs revealed Mary's mother's affairs and her illegitimate child. In that period, they were seen as shocking. Mary read these memoirs and her mother's books and was brought up to cherish her mother's memory. Mary's earliest years were happy, judging from the letters of William's housekeeper and nurse, Louisa Jones. But Godwin was often deeply in debt; feeling that he could not raise Mary and Fanny himself, he looked for a second wife. In December 1801, he married Mary Jane Clairmont, a well-educated woman with two young children—Charles and Claire SO MANY MARY'S! Sorry folks. Most of her father's friends disliked his new wife, describing her as a straight fucking bitch. Ok, not really, but they didn't like her. However, William was devoted to her, and the marriage worked. Mary, however, came to hate that bitch. William's 19th-century biographer Charles Kegan Paul later suggested that Mrs. Godwin had favored her own children over Williams. So, how awesome is it that he had a biographer? That's so badass.  Together, Mary's father and his new bride started a publishing firm called M. J. Godwin, which sold children's books and stationery, maps, and games. However, the business wasn't making any loot, and her father was forced to borrow butt loads of money to keep it going. He kept borrowing money to pay off earlier loans, just adding to his problems. By 1809, William's business was close to closing up shop, and he was "near to despair." Mary's father was saved from debtor's prison by devotees such as Francis Place, who lent him additional money. So, debtor's prison is pretty much EXACTLY what it sounds like. If you couldn't pay your debts, they threw your ass in jail. Unlike today where they just FUCK UP YOUR CREDIT! THANKS, COLUMBIA HOUSE!!!  Though Mary received little education, her father tutored her in many subjects. He often took the children on educational trips. They had access to his library and the many intelligent mofos who visited him, including the Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the former vice-president of the United States Aaron Burr. You know, that dude that shot and killed his POLITICAL opponent, Alexander Hamilton, in a fucking duel! Ah… I was born in the wrong century.   Mary's father admitted he was not educating the children according to Mary's mother's philosophy as outlined in works such as A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. However, Mary still received an unusual and advanced education for a girl of the time. She had a governess, a daily tutor, and read many of her father's children's Roman and Greek history books. For six months in 1811, she also attended a boarding school in Ramsgate, England. Her father described her at age 15 as "singularly bold, somewhat imperious, and active of mind. Her desire of knowledge is great, and her perseverance in everything she undertakes almost invincible." My father didn't know how to spell my name until I was twelve.  In June of 1812, Mary's father sent her to stay with the family of the radical William Baxter, near Dundee, Scotland. In a letter to Baxter, he wrote, "I am anxious that she should be brought up ... like a philosopher, even like a cynic." Scholars have speculated that she may have been sent away for her health, remove her from the seamy side of the business, or introduce her to radical politics. However, Mary loved the spacious surroundings of Baxter's house and with his four daughters, and she returned north in the summer of 1813 to hang out for 10 months. In the 1831 introduction to Frankenstein, she recalled: "I wrote then—but in a most common-place style. It was beneath the trees of the grounds belonging to our house, or on the bleak sides of the woodless mountains near, that my true compositions, the airy flights of my imagination, were born and fostered."   Mary Godwin may have first met the radical poet-philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley in between her two stays in Scotland. When she returned home for a second time on 30 March 1814, Percy Shelley became estranged from his wife and regularly visited Mary's father, William Godwin, whom he had agreed to bail out of debt. Percy Shelley's radicalism, particularly his economic views, alienated him from his wealthy aristocratic family. They wanted him to be a high, upstanding snoot and follow traditional models of the landed aristocracy. He tried to donate large amounts of the family's money to projects meant to help the poor and disadvantaged. Percy Shelley, therefore, had a problem gaining access to capital until he inherited his estate because his family did not want him wasting it on projects of "political justice." After several months of promises, Shelley announced that he could not or would not pay off all of Godwin's debts. Godwin was angry and felt betrayed and whooped his fuckin ass! Yeah! Ok, not really. He was just super pissed. Mary and Percy began hookin' up on the down-low at her mother Mary Wollstonecraft's grave in the churchyard of St Pancras Old Church, and they fell in love—she was 16, and he was 21. Creepy and super fucking gross.   On 26 June 1814, Shelley and Godwin declared their love for one another as Shelley announced he could not hide his "ardent passion,." This led her in a "sublime and rapturous moment" to say she felt the same way; on either that day or the next, Godwin lost her virginity to Shelley, which tradition claims happened in the churchyard. So, the grown-ass 21-year-old man statutorily raped the 16-year-old daughter of the man he idolized and dicked over. In a graveyard. My god, how things have changed...GROSS! Godwin described herself as attracted to Shelley's "wild, intellectual, unearthly looks." Smart but ugly. Got it. To Mary's dismay, her father disapproved and tried to thwart the relationship and salvage his daughter's "spotless fame." No! You don't say! Dad wasn't into his TEENAGE DAUGHTER BANGING A MAN IN THE GRAVEYARD!?! Mary's father learned of Shelley's inability to pay off the father's debts at about the same time. Oof. He found out after he diddled her. Mary, who later wrote of "my excessive and romantic attachment to my father," was confused. Um… what? She saw Percy Shelley as an embodiment of her parents' liberal and reformist ideas of the 1790s, particularly Godwin's view that marriage was a repressive monopoly, which he had argued in his 1793 edition of Political Justice but later retracted. On 28 July 1814, the couple eloped and secretly left for France, taking Mary's stepsister, Claire Clairmont, with them.  After convincing Mary's mother, who took off after them to Calais, that they did not wish to return, the trio traveled to Paris, and then, by donkey, mule, carriage, and foot, through France, recently ravaged by war, all the way to Switzerland. "It was acting in a novel, being an incarnate romance," Mary Shelley recalled in 1826. Godwin wrote about France in 1814: "The distress of the inhabitants, whose houses had been burned, their cattle killed and all their wealth destroyed, has given a sting to my detestation of war...". As they traveled, Mary and Percy read works by Mary Wollstonecraft and others, kept a joint journal, and continued their own writing. Finally, at Lucerne, lack of money forced the three to turn back. Instead, they traveled down the Rhine and by land to the Dutch port of Maassluis, arriving at Gravesend, Kent, on 13 September 1814. The situation awaiting Mary Godwin in England was packed with bullshit, some of which she had not expected. Either before or during their journey, she had become pregnant. She and Percy now found themselves penniless, and, to Mary's stupid ass surprise, her father refused to have anything to do with her. The couple moved with Claire into lodgings at Somers Town, and later, Nelson Square. They kept doing their thing, reading, and writing and entertained Percy Shelley's friends. Percy Shelley would often leave home for short periods to dodge bill collectors, and the couple's heartbroken letters would reveal their pain while he was away. Pregnant and often sick, Mary Godwin had to hear of Percy's joy at the birth of his son by Harriet Shelley in late 1814 due to his constant escapades with Claire Clairmont. Supposedly, Shelley and Clairmont were almost certainly lovers, which caused Mary to be rightfully jealous. And yes, Claire was Mary's cousin. Percy was a friggin' creep. Percy pissed off Mary when he suggested that they both take the plunge into a stream naked during a walk in the French countryside. This offended her due to her principles, and she was like, "Oh, hell nah, sahn!" and started taking off her earrings in a rage. Or something like that. She was partly consoled by the visits of Hogg, whom she disliked at first but soon considered a close friend. Percy Shelley seems to have wanted Mary and Hogg to become lovers; Mary did not dismiss the idea since she believed in free love in principle. She was a hippie before being a hippie was cool. Percy probably just wanted to not feel guilty for hooking up with her cousin. Creep. In reality, however, she loved only Percy and seemed to have gone no further than flirting with Hogg. On 22 February 1815, she gave birth to a two-months premature baby girl, who was not expected to survive. On 6 March, she wrote to Hogg: "My dearest Hogg, my baby is dead—will you come to see me as soon as you can. I wish to see you—It was perfectly well when I went to bed—I awoke in the night to give it suck it appeared to be sleeping so quietly that I would not awake it. It was dead then, but we did not find that out till morning—from its appearance it evidently died of convulsions—Will you come—you are so calm a creature & Shelley (Percy) is afraid of a fever from the milk—for I am no longer a mother now." The loss of her child brought about acute depression in Mary. She was haunted by visions of the baby, but she conceived again and had recovered by the summer. With a revival in Percy's finances after the death of his grandfather, Sir Bysshe Shelley, the couple holidayed in Torquay and then rented a two-story cottage at Bishopsgate, on the edge of Windsor Great Park. Unfortunately, little is known about this period in Mary Godwin's life since her journal from May 1815 to July 1816 was lost. At Bishopsgate, Percy wrote his poem Alastor or The Spirit of Solitude; and on 24 January 1816, Mary gave birth to a second child, William, named after her father and soon nicknamed "Willmouse." In her novel The Last Man, she later imagined Windsor as a Garden of Eden. In May 1816, Mary, Percy, and their son traveled to Geneva with Claire Clairmont. They planned to spend the summer with the poet Lord Byron, whose recent affair with Claire had left her pregnant. Claire sounds like a bit of a trollop. No judging, just making an observation. The party arrived in Geneva on 14 May 1816, where Mary called herself "Mrs Shelley." Byron joined them on 25 May with his young physician, John William Polidori, and rented the Villa Diodati, close to Lake Geneva at the village of Cologny; Percy rented a smaller building called Maison Chapuis on the waterfront nearby. They spent their time writing, boating on the lake, and talking late into the night. "It proved a wet, ungenial summer," Mary Shelley remembered in 1831, "and incessant rain often confined us for days to the house." Sitting around a log fire at Byron's villa, the company amused themselves with German ghost stories called Fantasmagoriana, which prompted Byron to propose that they "each write a ghost story." Unable to think up an account, young Mary became flustered: "Have you thought of a story? I was asked each morning, and each morning I was forced to reply with a mortifying negative." Finally, one mid-June evening, the discussions turned to the principle of life. "Perhaps a corpse would be reanimated," Mary noted, "galvanism had given token of such things." Galvanism is a term invented by the late 18th-century physicist and chemist Alessandro Volta to refer to the generation of electric current by chemical action. The word also came to refer to the discoveries of its namesake, Luigi Galvani, specifically the generation of electric current within biological organisms and the contraction/convulsion of natural muscle tissue upon contact with electric current. While Volta theorized and later demonstrated the phenomenon of his "Galvanism" to be replicable with otherwise inert materials, Galvani thought his discovery to confirm the existence of "animal electricity," a vital force that gave life to organic matter. We'll talk a little more about Galvani and a murderer named George Foster toward the end of the episode. It was after midnight before they retired, and she was unable to sleep, mainly because she became overwhelmed by her imagination as she kept thinking about the grim terrors of her "waking dream," her ghost story: "I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half vital motion. Frightful must it be; for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavour to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world." She began writing what she assumed would be a short, profound story. With Percy Shelley's encouragement, she turned her little idea into her first novel, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, published in 1818. She later described that time in Switzerland as "when I first stepped out from childhood into life." The story of the writing of Frankenstein has been fictionalized repeatedly, and it helped form the basis for several films. Here's a cool little side note: In September 2011, the astronomer Donald Olson, after a visit to the Lake Geneva villa the previous year and inspecting data about the motion of the moon and stars, concluded that her waking dream took place "between 2 am and 3 am" 16 June 1816, several days after the initial idea by Lord Byron that they each write their ghost stories. Shelley and her husband collaborated on the story, but the extent of Percy's contribution to the novel is unknown and has been argued over by readers and critics forever. There are differences in the 1818, 1823, and 1831 versions. Mary Shelley wrote, "I certainly did not owe the suggestion of one incident, nor scarcely of one train of feeling, to my husband, and yet but for his incitement, it would never have taken the form in which it was presented to the world." She wrote that the preface to the first edition was her husband's work "as far as I can recollect." James Rieger concluded Percy's "assistance at every point in the book's manufacture was so extensive that one hardly knows whether to regard him as editor or minor collaborator." At the same time, Anne K. Mellor later argued Percy only "made many technical corrections and several times clarified the narrative and thematic continuity of the text." Charles E. Robinson, the editor of a facsimile edition of the Frankenstein manuscripts, concluded that Percy's contributions to the book "were no more than what most publishers' editors have provided new (or old) authors or, in fact, what colleagues have provided to each other after reading each other's works in progress." So, eat one, Percy! Just kidding. In 1840 and 1842, Mary and her son traveled together all over the continent. Mary recorded these trips in Rambles in Germany and Italy in 1840, 1842, and 1843. In 1844, Sir Timothy Shelley finally died at the age of ninety, "falling from the stalk like an overblown flower," Mary put it. For the first time in her life, she and her son were financially independent, though the remaining estate wasn't worth as much as they had thought. In the mid-1840s, Mary Shelley found herself in the crosshairs of three separate blackmailing sons of bitches. First, in 1845, an Italian political exile called Gatteschi, whom she had met in Paris, threatened to publish letters she had sent him. Scandalous! However, a friend of her son's bribed a police chief into seizing Gatteschi's papers, including the letters, which were then destroyed. Vaffanculo, Gatteschi! Shortly afterward, Mary Shelley bought some letters written by herself and Percy Shelley from a man calling himself G. Byron and posing as the illegitimate son of the late Lord Byron. Also, in 1845, Percy Shelley's cousin Thomas Medwin approached her, claiming to have written a damaging biography of Percy Shelley. He said he would suppress it in return for £250, but Mary told him to eat a big ole bag of dicks and jog on! In 1848, Percy Florence married Jane Gibson St John. The marriage proved a happy one, and Mary liked Jane. Mary lived with her son and daughter-in-law at Field Place, Sussex, the Shelleys' ancestral home, and at Chester Square, London, and vacationed with them, as well. Mary's last years were blighted by illness. From 1839, she suffered from headaches and bouts of paralysis in parts of her body, which sometimes prevented her from reading and writing, obviously two of her favorite things. Then, on 1 February 1851, at Chester Square, Mary Shelly died at fifty-three from what her doctor suspected was a brain tumor. According to Jane Shelley, Mary had asked to be buried with her mother and father. Still, looking at the graveyard at St Pancras and calling it "dreadful," Percy and Jane chose to bury her instead at St Peter's Church in Bournemouth, near their new home at Boscombe. On the first anniversary of Mary's death, the Shelleys opened her box-desk. Inside they found locks of her dead children's hair, a notebook she had shared with Percy Bysshe Shelley, and a copy of his poem Adonaïs with one page folded round a silk parcel containing some of his ashes and the remains of his heart. Romantic or disturbing? Maybe a bit of both. Mary Shelley remained a stout political radical throughout her life. Mary's works often suggested that cooperation and sympathy, mainly as practiced by women in the family, were the ways to reform civil society. This view directly challenged the individualistic Romantic ethos promoted by Percy Shelley and Enlightenment political theories. She wrote seven novels / Two travel narrations / Twenty three short stories / Three books of children's literature, and many articles. Mary Shelley left her mark on the literary world, and her name will be forever etched in the catacombs of horror for generations to come. When it comes to reanimation, there's someone else we need to talk about. George Forster (or Foster) was found guilty of murdering his wife and child by drowning them in Paddington Canal, London. He was hanged at Newgate on 18 January 1803, after which his body was taken to a nearby house where it was used in an experiment by Italian scientist Giovanni Aldini. At his trial, the events were reconstructed. Forster's mother-in-law recounted that her daughter and grandchild had left her house to see Forster at 4 pm on Saturday, 4 December 1802. In whose house Forster lodged, Joseph Bradfield reported that they had stayed together that night and gone out at 10 am on Sunday morning. He also stated that Forster and his wife had not been on good terms because she wished to live with him. On Sunday, various witnesses saw Forster with his wife and child in public houses near Paddington Canal. The body of his child was found on Monday morning; after the canal was dragged for three days, his wife's body was also found. Forster claimed that upon leaving The Mitre, he set out alone for Barnet to see his other two children in the workhouse there, though he was forced to turn back at Whetstone due to the failing light. This was contradicted by a waiter at The Mitre who said the three left the inn together. Skepticism was also expressed that he could have walked to Whetstone when he claimed. Nevertheless, the jury found him guilty. He was sentenced to death and also to be dissected after that. This sentence was designed to provide medicine with corpses on which to experiment and ensure that the condemned could not rise on Judgement Day, their bodies having been cut into pieces and selectively discarded. Forster was hanged on 18 January, shortly before he made a full confession. He said he had come to hate his wife and had twice before taken his wife to the canal, but his nerve had both times failed him. A recent BBC Knowledge documentary (Real Horror: Frankenstein) questions the fairness of the trial. It notes that friends of George Forster's wife later claimed that she was highly suicidal and had often talked about killing herself and her daughter. According to this documentary, Forster attempted suicide by stabbing himself with a crudely fashioned knife. This was to avoid awakening during the dissection of his body, should he not have died when hanged. This was a real possibility owing to the crude methods of execution at the time. The same reference suggests that his 'confession' was obtained under duress. In fact, it alleges that Pass, a Beadle or an official of a church or synagogue on Aldini's payroll, fast-tracked the whole trial and legal procedure to obtain the freshest corpse possible for his benefactor. After the execution, Forster's body was given to Giovanni Aldini for experimentation. Aldini was the nephew of fellow scientist Luigi Galvani and an enthusiastic proponent of his uncle's method of stimulating muscles with electric current, known as Galvanism. The experiment he performed on Forster's body demonstrated this technique. The Newgate Calendar (a record of executions at Newgate) reports that "On the first application of the process to the face, the jaws of the deceased criminal began to quiver, and the adjoining muscles were horribly contorted, and one eye was actually opened. In the subsequent part of the process the right hand was raised and clenched, and the legs and thighs were set in motion."  Several people present believed that Forster was being brought back to life (The Newgate Calendar reports that even if this had been so, he would have been re-executed since his sentence was to "hang until he be dead"). One man, Mr. Pass, the beadle of the Surgeons' Company, was so shocked that he died shortly after leaving. The hanged man was undoubtedly dead since his blood had been drained and his spinal cord severed after the execution.   Top Ten Frankenstein Movies https://screenrant.com/best-frankenstein-movies-ranked-imdb/

1816 is known as The Year Without a Summer, because an Indonesian volcano eruption had made temperatures plummet and crops fail across the globe. During this bizarre, dark, and gloomy season, several young stalwarts of English literature — Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin — gathered at the infamous Villa Diodati on … Continue reading Episode 270 LIVE: Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, and the Haunted Summer of 1816

Agradece a este podcast tantas horas de entretenimiento y disfruta de episodios exclusivos como éste. ¡Apóyale en iVoox! REMANDO AL VIENTO Tal vez, sólo los poetas entiendan a los poetas y la poesía, ese hálito divino, no sea asequible a todas las miradas. Queda el consuelo de contemplarla, como se observa, ajeno a toda comprensión, un milagro. El de tus ojos, por ejemplo. La contemplación es la respiración del alma y el encargo de los artistas es el de Prometeo, que, pese a saber el castigo que le esperaba, robó el fuego de los dioses para alumbrar la oscuridad de los hombres. Remando al Viento, Gonzalo Suárez, 1988, es una película para contemplar, como se contempla un cuadro romántico, como se atiende a un poema de Lord Byron. Todo en ella es un ejercicio para iniciados que se ofrece como el acto de la belleza que es. Que no lea poesía quien no soporte el silencio, pues tanto hay en ella de grito como de callado. Marey Shelley conoce sus fantasmas, entiende a su criatura, y, aún así, no puede liberarse de ella. “Si has tenido poder para escribir nuestro destino, ten ahora fuerza para aceptarlo” le dirá Lord Byron. Amar con y a pesar de las usencias, del dolor, del horror, del saber y del no poder. Remar con el viento como una entrega total a la vida, dispuestos a dejarnos llevar, a no preguntar, a aceptar el destino sin más equipaje que el de las propias convicciones y el deseo de vivir intensamente sin restricciones. A qué preocuparse tanto del destino, si todos tenemos garantizado el mismo. El único valor es el viaje en sí mismo. Pepa Llausás, mayo, 2021. William Godwin, padre de Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, más tarde, Mary Shelley, fue un reconocido pensador de su época, especialmente por su obra “Investigación sobre la justicia política y su influencia en la moral y la felicidad”, 1793. Escucha este episodio completo y accede a todo el contenido exclusivo de Las Musas no Avisan Podcast. Descubre antes que nadie los nuevos episodios, y participa en la comunidad exclusiva de oyentes en https://go.ivoox.com/sq/623091

Inizia l'estate e dea ex machina diventa reale: questa settimana è Mary Shelley.Torniamo indietro del tempo, alla freddissima estate del 1816 a Ginevra, quando la diciannovenne Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin scrisse la sua opera magna: Frankenstein o il moderno Prometeo.A cura di Federica FilippinMusic credits: Morgana Rides by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4080-morgana-rides-License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (de casada Mary Shelley; Londres, 30 de agosto de 1797-ibíd, 1 de febrero de 1851) fue una narradora, dramaturga, ensayista, filósofa y biógrafa británica,​ reconocida sobre todo por ser la autora de la novela gótica Frankenstein o el moderno Prometeo (1818)4​ considerada la primera obra de ciencia ficción de la historia.

Mary Shelley - (2017) The love affair between poet Percy Shelley and 18 year old Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, which resulted in Mary Shelley writing Frankenstein.

Mary Shelley - (2017) The love affair between poet Percy Shelley and 18 year old Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, which resulted in Mary Shelley writing Frankenstein.

Mary Shelley (Biography, Drama, Romance)Mary Shelley is a movie starring Elle Fanning, Maisie Williams, and Douglas Booth. The love affair between poet Percy Shelley and 18 year old Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, which resulted in Mary Shelley writing Frankenstein.Director: Haifaa Al-MansourWriters: Emma Jensen, Haifaa Al-Mansour (additional writing by)Stars: Elle Fanning, Maisie Williams, Douglas Booth - (IMDb) Movies First RSS feed:  https://feeds.megaphone.fm/BIT7197946000 Stream podcast episodes on demand from www.bitesz.com (mobile friendly).  Subscribe, rate and review Movies First at all good podcatcher apps, including Apple Podcasts (formerly iTunes), Stitcher, PocketCasts, audioBoom, CastBox.FM, Podbean, Spreaker etc.For more, follow Movies First on Facebook, twitter and Google+:Facebook - @moviesfirsttwitter - @ moviesfirstGoogle+ -  https://plus.google.com/u/1/b/116201551232774363704/108207704769091029605  YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCatJQHaVabIvzCLqO16XvSQ  If you're enjoying Movies First, please share and tell your friends. Your support would be appreciated...thank you.#movies #cinema #entertainment #podcast #reviews #moviesfirst Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Join us this month as we discuss Mary Shelley's seminal sci-fi/horror novel, Frankenstein. Overview It was one fateful summer night in the year of 1816 that young Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin found herself near Lake Geneva in the company of fellow romantic authors Lord Byron and her future husband Percy Shelley. Due to the unpleasant nature of that year’s summer, they were confined to Byron’s villa for much of their time there, reading German ghost stories and exciting their imaginations. This led to Lord Byron’s suggestion that they each write their own ghost story. From this, a monster was created. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is a classic horror tale that follows the exploits of one Victor Frankenstein, a noble young gentleman from Geneva, Switzerland. At the ripe age of seventeen Victor must simultaneously cope with losing his mother to scarlet fever and leaving the nest to journey off to study at a neighboring university. In his turmoil, Victor becomes obsessed with natural philosophy, alchemy, and other practices not seen as acceptable in the academic world. Isolated in his makeshift workshop, he finds a way to reanimate a body he assembles from pieces of various types of corpses, human and animal alike. On the night his creation comes to life, he flees the scene in a panic, and the monster is left to fend for itself.  Victor tries to overlook fears of what the monster may do unsupervised, and eventually his greatest fear is realized when months later he and his family are confronted by the monster, now armed with the knowledge of its creator’s misdoings.  While short in length, the novel is packed full of early feminist critiques about man’s abuse of nature and the subversion of female’s biological role in reproduction. This was during a time when women were mostly seen as care takers of the home and bearers of children. Unsurprisingly, Mary Shelley’s own success in writing as a woman during this era was a rare occurrence. These circumstances create a unique blend of horror and social commentary that feed off of each other, a technique we see in practice still today. We are currently dealing with the exponential growth of technology that threatens the extinction of many different plant and animal species. And, even two hundred years after this was published, women are still fighting for workplace equality and an end to a culture of rampant sexual misconduct. Unlike almost every film adaptation of Frankenstein, Victor’s monster might become a sympathetic being by the conclusion of the story. This monstrous being gains an understanding of the world around it, as well as the use of language, but because of its hideous outer appearance it is hated by every human it encounters--including its creator Victor Frankenstein. Time and again, the creature seeks companionship but is met with utter rejection. With no help from even his creator, the monster responds with exceedingly violent acts against Frankenstein and his family. In the end it's hard to decide whether Victor or his monster is necessarily Bad or Good, and we are often left wondering whose actions are truly to blame for the tragic events that unfold. We eventually ask: Who's really the monster here? Much like Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein has been adapted thousands of times throughout modern history and has become a cultural icon of the modern horror genre. Also much like the classic vampire tale, much of the source material is ignored and changed to fit the needs of whatever culture is viewing it. This book provides a refreshing look for anyone looking to more deeply examine the lessons that tend to be watered down in the popular retelling of the myth. It’s always good to get back to the basics, and this novel is a delightfully chilling reminder of that. -Eric Toennis Show Notes This one is a good piece about Frankenstein and film: http://knarf.english.upenn.edu/Articles/hefferna.html   This one is about the theme of femininity and nature in the novel: http://www.lachsa.net/ourpages/auto/2017/3/1/56583024/Mellor-Possessing-Nature.pdf   The last one makes us all question what really is a monster: http://knarf.english.upenn.edu/Articles/brooks2.html   This month's music features a song called "Beverly," from Golden Hour's new EP, Demo Daze.   -Eric

Part of the Shelley's Ghost Exhibition. Even after their marriage Godwin and Wollstonecraft preferred to live independently during the day, and communicate by correspondence. They regularly exchanged anything from long, carefully composed letters to short notes dashed off on scraps of paper. Shown here are Mary's last three notes to Godwin, written while she was waiting impatiently for the delivery of her child ('the animal'), and seeking reassurance from the midwife, Mrs Blenkinsop. In her final note, Mary Wollstonecraft half-quotes her mother's last words; 'Have a little patience, and all will be over'. Her own daughter, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (later Mary Shelley), was born a few hours afterwards. It was a straightforward birth, but Mary Wollstonecraft soon contracted an infection, and died eleven days later.

Part of the Shelley's Ghost Exhibition. Even after their marriage Godwin and Wollstonecraft preferred to live independently during the day, and communicate by correspondence. They regularly exchanged anything from long, carefully composed letters to short notes dashed off on scraps of paper. Shown here are Mary's last three notes to Godwin, written while she was waiting impatiently for the delivery of her child ('the animal'), and seeking reassurance from the midwife, Mrs Blenkinsop. In her final note, Mary Wollstonecraft half-quotes her mother's last words; 'Have a little patience, and all will be over'. Her own daughter, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (later Mary Shelley), was born a few hours afterwards. It was a straightforward birth, but Mary Wollstonecraft soon contracted an infection, and died eleven days later.