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- Herausgeber: Musaicum Books
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
Mary Shelley, the renowned author behind the iconic novel Frankenstein, also penned The Last Man, a lesser-known but equally powerful work. The Last Man is a captivating tale set in a post-apocalyptic world, delving into themes of loneliness, mortality, and the human spirit. Shelley's writing style is rich in vivid imagery and emotive language, reminiscent of the Romantic literary movement of the early 19th century. The Last Man offers a unique perspective on societal collapse and the resilience of the individual amidst chaos. In contrast, Frankenstein explores complex ethical questions surrounding creation and identity, showcasing Shelley's prowess in crafting thought-provoking narratives. Both novels showcase Shelley's ability to blend elements of science fiction, gothic horror, and philosophical inquiry into her storytelling. Mary Shelley's experiences with personal tragedy and societal upheaval undoubtedly influenced her exploration of these profound themes in her works. Readers interested in thought-provoking narratives that challenge conventional notions of humanity and society will find both The Last Man and Frankenstein to be essential reads in the realm of classic literature. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A comprehensive Introduction outlines these selected works' unifying features, themes, or stylistic evolutions. - The Author Biography highlights personal milestones and literary influences that shape the entire body of writing. - A Historical Context section situates the works in their broader era—social currents, cultural trends, and key events that underpin their creation. - A concise Synopsis (Selection) offers an accessible overview of the included texts, helping readers navigate plotlines and main ideas without revealing critical twists. - A unified Analysis examines recurring motifs and stylistic hallmarks across the collection, tying the stories together while spotlighting the different work's strengths. - Reflection questions inspire deeper contemplation of the author's overarching message, inviting readers to draw connections among different texts and relate them to modern contexts. - Lastly, our hand‐picked Memorable Quotes distill pivotal lines and turning points, serving as touchstones for the collection's central themes.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018
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The Last Man & Frankenstein
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Table of Contents
Introduction
The Last Man & Frankenstein collects two complete novels by Mary Shelley: the original 1818 edition of Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, and The Last Man (1826). This volume’s purpose is to present, in one place, the works that most clearly display her pioneering imagination across Gothic and speculative modes. By assembling the first edition of Frankenstein with her later vision of a future world under extreme strain, the collection invites readers to trace a continuous inquiry into the promises and perils of human invention, social bonds, and survival. Each text appears as a self-contained narrative, yet together they form a resonant, mutually illuminating pairing.
Mary Shelley, a British writer of the Romantic period, composed these novels amid intense debates about science, politics, and the imagination. Frankenstein first appeared anonymously in 1818; a revised authorial edition followed in 1831. The Last Man was published in 1826, extending her speculative reach from the experiment and the household to the fate of entire societies. This collection concentrates on these two novels not as isolated curiosities, but as foundational works that shaped later literature. They helped to define strands of modern science fiction and apocalyptic fiction while remaining firmly rooted in Gothic atmosphere, psychological insight, and ethical reflection.
This is a collection of novels. No short stories, poems, essays, letters, or diaries external to the fiction are included. Within the novels, however, Shelley makes sophisticated use of hybrid forms. Frankenstein is framed by an exchange of letters that encloses a first-person narrative and further embedded accounts. The Last Man opens with an antiquarian claim of transcription from ancient writings and proceeds as a first-person chronicle of a future age. These devices anchor extraordinary events in documentary textures, lending plausibility to speculative premises and allowing multiple perspectives to complicate judgment, sympathy, and responsibility.
Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus begins with a voyage of exploration and the unexpected encounter with a scientist who recounts how he pursued the secret of life, assembled a living being, and confronted the consequences of that creation. The novel’s premise is at once intimate and vast: a private act that tests the boundaries of knowledge, duty, and kinship. Across changing landscapes and voices, Shelley explores isolation and desire for recognition, the allure and danger of discovery, and the obligations owed by creators and communities. Its Gothic settings intensify these moral questions rather than merely decorate them.
The Last Man imagines a future history set in the twenty-first century, narrated from a vantage that looks back on political ideals, friendships, and a world increasingly threatened by a spreading disease. Without foreclosing its unfolding, the premise centers on how individuals and nations respond as the ordinary frameworks of life erode. Shelley examines the tension between public duty and private affection, the fragility of institutions, and the endurance of hope and memory under pressure. The speculative horizon allows her to test the limits of progress and to consider how character and community are strained by sweeping historical forces.
Read together, these novels reveal a unified set of concerns. Both interrogate ambition and its costs, whether in the laboratory, the state, or the heart. Both trace the peril of isolation and the need for reciprocal ties, asking what obligations humans bear toward beings they have made or communities to which they belong. Both scrutinize the relationship between imagination and ethics, staging situations in which feeling, reason, and responsibility intersect. Shelley’s characteristic inquiry is not merely into what can be done, but into what should be done, and what forms of care, accountability, and foresight a humane society requires.
Shelley’s style combines narrative experimentation with evocative description. She favors frame tales that move between narrators, climates, and locales, creating shifting vantage points that test the reader’s judgments. Scenes of mountains, seas, cities, and desolate spaces are not inert backdrops; they register states of mind and moral weather. Her diction carries the cadence of Romantic prose yet remains attentive to concrete detail, technical vocabulary, and the rhythms of conversation. She often juxtaposes scientific, political, and domestic idioms, allowing registers to collide productively. The result is a storytelling method that balances atmosphere with argument, emotion with analysis.
Both novels engage the intellectual climate of their times. Frankenstein converses with contemporary discussions of natural philosophy, anatomy, and galvanism, as well as with debates about exploration and the reach of human mastery. The Last Man extends this engagement to questions of governance, popular feeling, and the uncertain trajectories of the future. Across them, Shelley reflects on hopes for progress that emerged after revolutions and wars, and on the vulnerabilities that accompany rapid change. Her fiction thus functions as cultural critique without sacrificing narrative momentum, demonstrating how speculative plots can distill and test the premises of an age.
The lasting significance of these works is evident in their wide circulation and continual adaptation. Frankenstein is frequently cited as a foundational text for modern science fiction and bioethical reflection, while The Last Man stands as an early, influential vision of global catastrophe and survival. Beyond generic precedence, their endurance derives from the clarity of their central questions: how knowledge is pursued, how communities respond to crisis, and what forms of responsibility bind people together. They have shaped artistic traditions and public conversations in literature, theater, film, and cultural discourse, without exhausting the interpretive possibilities they invite.
This edition presents the original 1818 text of Frankenstein. The later 1831 version, revised by Shelley, remains important, but the 1818 novel offers readers access to the work as it first appeared. It preserves the initial arrangement of events and the tonal balance that early audiences encountered, while still demonstrating the narrative architecture that has become so recognizable. Reading the 1818 text alongside The Last Man foregrounds continuities in theme and method across the decade between them and highlights how Shelley’s speculative imagination developed in conversation with shifting personal, intellectual, and publishing contexts.
Reading these novels together encourages attention to structure as well as story. Both begin with frames that mediate access to extraordinary events, ask readers to weigh testimony, and create space for reflection before and after acts of decision. Both rely on incremental revelation rather than sudden spectacle, building intensity through layered voices and patiently described settings. Noticing these shared strategies can deepen appreciation of how Shelley calibrates suspense to ethical inquiry. The arrangement of this volume facilitates such comparisons without prescribing interpretation, inviting readers to move between the novels’ scenes of creation and crisis and to attend to their echoes.
Gathered here, Frankenstein (1818) and The Last Man are offered as complete, authoritative windows onto Mary Shelley’s most influential speculative fictions. The scope is deliberately focused: two novels that, in different keys, ask what it means to make, to govern, to love, and to endure. Together they illuminate a body of work whose questions remain urgent: the reach of scientific ambition, the resilience and fragility of social ties, and the moral imagination required by uncertain futures. This collection aims to support sustained reading and re-reading, providing a coherent context for works that continue to challenge, unsettle, and inspire.
Author Biography
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797–1851) was an English novelist of the Romantic era whose work shaped both Gothic fiction and the emerging literature of scientific speculation. Best known for Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818), she also authored The Last Man (1826), an early vision of global catastrophe and human endurance. Writing in the wake of revolutionary politics and rapid scientific change, she explored ambition, responsibility, isolation, and the fragility of social bonds. Her career unfolded across Britain and continental Europe, intersecting with leading literary currents. Across her novels, she combined philosophical reflection with narrative experiment, leaving a durable imprint on modern culture.
Raised in an intellectually vibrant household, Shelley received an unconventional, largely home-based education that emphasized wide reading, independent judgment, and debate. She grew up amid currents of Enlightenment and Romantic thought, with ready access to libraries and to conversations among writers and reformers. Her early reading ranged from classical history and philosophy to contemporary poetry and travel accounts. She followed public discussions of moral agency, rights, and social responsibility, as well as new scientific ideas reported in lectures and periodicals. This training nurtured a habit of inquiry that would inform her fiction, where ethical reflection and speculative imagination continually test one another.
The composition of Frankenstein is closely tied to the summer of 1816 near Geneva, when a group of writers, including Lord Byron, John Polidori, and Percy Bysshe Shelley, exchanged ghost tales and discussed science and philosophy. In a later account, Mary Shelley described a “waking dream” that supplied the novel’s central image. Contemporary debates over electricity, galvanism, and the boundaries between life and matter provided additional stimulus. She drafted the story in 1816–1817; the first edition appeared in 1818, published anonymously. Reviews were mixed yet fascinated, and the book quickly became associated with its true author, establishing her reputation as a distinctive new voice.
Frankenstein (1818) blends Gothic atmosphere with speculative inquiry to examine the consequences of unchecked ambition and the ethics of creation. The narrative probes obligations between creator and created, the social costs of exclusion, and the hazards of knowledge pursued without accountability. It reflects anxieties about scientific progress while avoiding simple condemnation, inviting readers to weigh sympathy against judgment. The 1818 text, lean and urgent in tone, helped shape subsequent conversations about responsibility in research and exploration. Though often read as a cautionary tale, it also remains a study of longing and recognition, sustaining its power across changing scientific and cultural contexts.
The Last Man (1826) extends Shelley’s speculative reach into a future world afflicted by a devastating plague. Rather than emphasize spectacle, the novel dwells on intimacy, grief, and the strain placed on ideals by prolonged catastrophe. Its characters and political setting have often been read as reflections on the hopes and disillusionments of the Romantic generation, while its apocalyptic scenario makes it a pioneering work of dystopian and post‑apocalyptic fiction. Initial reception was cool, but later readers have valued its meditative pace, historical insight, and exploration of solitude and solidarity under extreme pressure—qualities that have kept the book strikingly resonant.
Across her career, Shelley balanced imaginative fiction with careful editorial and biographical work. She revised Frankenstein in a widely read 1831 edition and, over the 1820s and 1830s, prepared texts and notes that helped shape the public understanding of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poetry. She supported herself through writing and commissions for journals and publishers, adapting to a competitive literary marketplace while remaining attentive to questions of political idealism, responsibility, and human vulnerability. The two novels featured here illustrate this range: Frankenstein dramatizes the ethical stakes of invention and neglect, while The Last Man turns to historical memory and endurance when institutions and certainties collapse.
In her later years, Shelley continued to write, edit, and advocate for thoughtful remembrance of her contemporaries, while maintaining an independent literary profile. She died in 1851, leaving a body of work whose cultural impact has steadily grown. Frankenstein has become a touchstone in debates over scientific responsibility, artificial life, and the social consequences of innovation. The Last Man, once neglected, is now recognized as foundational to modern catastrophe narratives. Together they secure Shelley’s place as a pivotal figure linking Gothic tradition to speculative fiction, and as a writer whose insights remain pertinent to technological, political, and ethical challenges today.
Historical Context
Mary Shelley’s career unfolded between the high tide of European Romanticism and the unsettled decades after the Napoleonic Wars. Frankenstein, first published in 1818, belongs to the postwar moment when questions of political authority, scientific possibility, and human rights were freshly contested. The Last Man, appearing in 1826, reflects a later phase of post-revolutionary culture marked by fatigue, mourning, and skepticism about progress. Together they span a period shaped by the French Revolution’s legacies, the Congress of Vienna settlement, and rapid transformations in science and industry. The collection thus links early nineteenth-century hopes for reform with growing anxieties about unintended consequences and the fragility of civilizations.
Shelley’s intellectual formation drew on the radical Enlightenment associated with her parents, the philosopher-novelist William Godwin and the feminist thinker Mary Wollstonecraft. Godwin’s Political Justice (1793) and Wollstonecraft’s arguments for women’s education and rational autonomy situated the young author within debates on perfectibility, rights, and social contract theory. That legacy persisted in Romantic-era disputes over whether political change required reasoned reform or revolutionary rupture, and whether institutions ennobled or corrupted individuals. Frankenstein’s dedication to Godwin in the 1818 edition signaled Mary Shelley’s engagement with those controversies, while her later works, including The Last Man, weigh the fate of ideals under historical pressure and personal loss.
Frankenstein’s gestation in 1816 coincided with extraordinary climate anomalies following the 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora, often termed the “Year Without a Summer.” In Switzerland, where Mary Godwin, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron, John Polidori, and Claire Clairmont gathered near Lake Geneva, persistent storms and darkness set the scene for a ghost-story challenge. This atmospheric disruption—felt across Europe and North America—amplified concerns about nature’s power and scarcity. The historically unusual weather, coupled with postwar displacement and economic distress, sharpened perception of environmental and social precarity. The Gothic experiment that became Frankenstein thus emerged from a concrete moment of meteorological and political disturbance.
When Frankenstein appeared anonymously in 1818, readers encountered a form that blended Gothic terror with the philosophical novel and travel narrative. Percy Shelley supplied the preface, and the book entered a market attuned to moral allegory as well as sensation. Contemporary reviews were mixed—praising invention, questioning taste—yet the story’s moral interrogations resonated in a Britain wrestling with responsibility in science, education, and governance. The novel’s international settings and Arctic frame mirrored an era of intensified travel and imperial projection. Its movement through letters and embedded narratives reflected a period fascinated by testimony, experiment, and the unstable authority of modern knowledge.
Frankenstein grew from a culture exhilarated by, and anxious about, electricity and chemistry. The Voltaic pile (1800) enabled sustained currents; Luigi Galvani’s demonstrations and Giovanni Aldini’s public experiments suggested electrical stimulation could animate muscular tissue. Humphry Davy’s popular lectures and publications framed chemistry as a transformative, even poetic, science. Such spectacles blurred boundaries between demonstration and display, inviting questions about the ethics of experimentation. Without committing to any single theory, Shelley wrote into a debate over whether life was mechanistic, vital, or spiritual. The novel’s allusions and tone presuppose a public conversant with galvanism, chemical inquiry, and the promises and perils of instrumental reason.
Early nineteenth-century medicine relied on dissection for teaching but faced chronic shortages of lawful cadavers, producing a black market in corpses and periodic scandals involving “resurrection men.” Public unease over anatomical procurement, together with fears about desecration and the limits of medical authority, circulated widely in newspapers and pamphlets. Frankenstein taps that tension without dwelling on procedure, emphasizing instead the moral relation between investigator and subject. Debates in the 1810s and 1820s about professionalization and oversight would continue, culminating later in reforms such as Britain’s Anatomy Act of 1832. Shelley's fiction echoes the era’s demand that scientific ambition be tempered by accountability to society.
Frankenstein’s Arctic framework aligns with Britain’s renewed push for northern exploration after 1815. Expeditions under John Ross (1818), William Edward Parry (1819–1820), and later John Franklin sought the Northwest Passage and advanced geographic science. Reports from these voyages, widely read at home, dramatized endurance, risk, and the allure of extremity. The novel’s attention to polar isolation and to transnational circulation by sea participates in this exploratory imaginary. It reflects, too, the era’s imperial reach, in which knowledge production, commercial ambition, and national prestige converged aboard ships that were scientific laboratories as much as instruments of expansion.
The decades around 1800 saw accelerating industrialization: steam power spread from mines to factories; textile mechanization transformed labor; and urban populations swelled. The Luddite disturbances (1811–1813) protested labor displacement and economic injustice, while reformers debated education, poor relief, and public order. Frankenstein’s persistent concern with making and unmaking—craft, assembly, and the aftermath of creation—resonated with a society confronted by machines that reorganized work and social relations. The book does not depict factories, but its moral economy of invention and responsibility speaks to anxieties about tools outstripping oversight and about the social obligations of those who wield transformative techniques.
Politically, Britain after Waterloo oscillated between reform and repression. Economic downturns, food prices, and demands for representation fueled mass meetings that culminated in the Peterloo massacre (1819) and the passage of the Six Acts. Across Europe, the Restoration order sought stability under the settlement crafted at Vienna, yet secret societies and liberal movements pressed for constitutional change. The Shelleys were associated with radical literary networks that scrutinized authority and championed liberty. Frankenstein’s inquiries into authority, education, and the social contract register a public conversation about how power should be justified and how individuals become, or fail to become, citizens within an accountable polity.
Mary Shelley spent much of 1818–1822 in Italy, moving among expatriate and artistic circles amid a peninsula overseen by Restoration powers and punctuated by revolts in 1820–1821. The period witnessed Byron’s increasing involvement with Greek independence, Percy Shelley’s death by drowning in 1822, and Mary Shelley’s eventual return to Britain in 1823. The climate of surveillance, censorship, and insurgent hope placed Romantic cosmopolitanism under stress. The Last Man, written in the mid-1820s, absorbs the political uncertainties of the time and the mourning culture that followed the deaths of friends and prominent liberals. Without allegorizing specific events, it measures ideals against historical contingency.
The Last Man appeared in 1826 as a three-volume novel set in a distant future, framed as a translation of prophetic “Sibylline” leaves discovered near Cumae. Its story unfolds across a Europe confronting war, leadership struggles, and a devastating plague. Early reviewers often objected to its pervasive melancholy and perceived political ambiguity, and the book did not achieve the immediate popularity of Frankenstein. Yet its speculative method—projecting contemporary dilemmas forward—marks a significant development in prose fiction. It repurposes travel narrative, statecraft reflection, and intimate testimony to ask what remains of community and virtue when institutions and populations collapse.
Public health and medical theory in the 1820s were deeply contested. European states maintained quarantine regimes—particularly around Mediterranean ports—while doctors debated contagionist and anti-contagionist explanations of disease. The first cholera pandemic began in 1817 in South Asia and spread westward in subsequent years, intensifying concerns about mobility, trade, and sanitation long before cholera reached Britain. The Last Man’s plague is imaginary, but its epidemiological imagination reflects an era of cordons, lazarettos, and uncertainty about etiology. The novel treats disease not only as a biological threat but as a test of governance, charity, and the capacity of scientific and religious institutions to command trust.
Shelley’s two novels sit amid arguments about population, scarcity, and political economy. Thomas Malthus’s Essay on the Principle of Population (1798; expanded in subsequent editions) challenged Godwinian perfectibility by positing checks on growth through famine, disease, and war. Frankenstein raises questions about generation, nurture, and social obligation; The Last Man stages extreme depopulation that forces reflection on the premises of improvement and progress. Neither text endorses a single theory, but both expose how demographic ideas intersect with policy, morality, and sentiment. In their different modes, they interrogate the balance between individual agency, institutional design, and impersonal historical forces.
Shelley wrote within a vibrant literary network that included Byron and Polidori, whose The Vampyre (1819) helped consolidate modern vampire fiction. Celebrity culture and scandal shaped reception, as did gender expectations for women writers. Frankenstein’s anonymous first edition fit a market in which authors—especially women—sometimes masked identity. Stage adaptations, notably Richard Brinsley Peake’s Presumption; or, the Fate of Frankenstein (1823), quickly popularized the tale and publicized Shelley’s authorship. The Last Man appeared when the three-decker novel dominated circulating libraries, and its ambitious scope tested conventions by blending political reflection, travel writing, and prophetic romance.
Over the nineteenth century, Frankenstein entered public consciousness as a myth of overreaching invention. Shelley revised the novel in 1831 with a new preface that narrated its origin, shaping subsequent readers’ understanding. The Last Man, by contrast, remained comparatively neglected, overshadowed by satire and historical romance then in fashion. Yet both works participated in larger conversations about secularization, fate, and the ethical limits of inquiry. As science professionalized and as industrial modernity intensified, Shelley’s fictions provided cautionary mirrors to triumphalist narratives of progress that accompanied railways, urban growth, and empire, without reducing themselves to simple antiscientific positions.
Twentieth-century scholarship reassessed Mary Shelley as a major intellectual figure, not merely an adjunct to famous men. Frankenstein became foundational for discussions of technoscience, responsibility, and the social construction of the “monster.” The Last Man was rediscovered as a key text in the genealogy of apocalyptic and science fiction, resonating during eras preoccupied with total war, nuclear threat, and environmental vulnerability. Feminist criticism highlighted questions of creation, reproduction, and authorship; political readings tracked state power and humanitarian ethics. The growth of science and technology studies, as well as disaster studies, provided new frameworks for interpreting Shelley’s future-oriented thought.
In the early twenty-first century, both novels have been reread through lenses of bioethics, climate risk, and pandemic preparedness. Debates about artificial life, genetic engineering, and responsible innovation often cite Frankenstein as a touchstone for discussing precaution and public accountability. The Last Man invited renewed attention during global health crises, offering a meditation on leadership, trust, and the uneven burdens of catastrophe. Environmental humanities scholarship has also revisited the Tambora context and the novels’ representations of extreme weather and fragile ecologies, situating Shelley within a longue durée of climate, technology, and social resilience discourse that extends beyond Romanticism’s original horizons. The collection, taken together, illuminates how early nineteenth-century debates about science, politics, and human community recur in later crises and reinterpretations.
Synopsis (Selection)
Frankenstein (Original Edition, 1818)
An ambitious young natural philosopher pushes beyond moral limits to animate a being, then recoils from the life he has made. The narrative unfolds through layered accounts that trace a widening chase between creator and creation, probing responsibility, alienation, and the hunger for recognition. Gothic in atmosphere and philosophical in scope, the novel binds scientific curiosity to questions of empathy, social belonging, and the cost of transgression.
The Last Man
Set in a near future, a mysterious plague transforms political idealism and private affections into a long ordeal of survival. Through an intimate chronicle of friends, lovers, and leaders confronted with global collapse, the book considers the limits of heroism, the fragility of communities, and the persistence of memory. Its tone is elegiac and prophetic, blending panoramic catastrophe with personal grief to examine what endures when institutions and certainties fall away.
From Personal Transgression to Global Catastrophe
Together, these novels track Shelley’s movement from the ethics of a single act of creation to the fate of humanity under impersonal forces. Both interrogate ambition, isolation, and the responsibilities we owe to others, yet they shift from the claustrophobic duel of maker and made to an expansive meditation on society, leadership, and loss. The style balances Romantic sublimity and psychological inquiry with speculative imagination, making existential questions feel immediate and embodied.
The Last Man & Frankenstein
Frankenstein(Original Edition, 1818)
Preface
The event on which this fiction is founded has been supposed, by Dr. Darwin, and some of the physiological writers of Germany, as not of impossible occurrence. I shall not be supposed as according the remotest degree of serious faith to such an imagination; yet, in assuming it as the basis of a work of fancy, I have not considered myself as merely weaving a series of supernatural terrors. The event on which the interest of the story depends is exempt from the disadvantages of a mere tale of spectres or enchantment. It was recommended by the novelty of the situations which it developes; and, however impossible as a physical fact, affords a point of view to the imagination for the delineating of human passions more comprehensive and commanding than any which the ordinary relations of existing events can yield.
I have thus endeavoured to preserve the truth of the elementary principles of human nature, while I have not scrupled to innovate upon their combinations. The Iliad, the tragic poetry of Greece, Shakespeare, in the Tempest and Midsummer Night’s Dream and most especially Milton, in Paradise Lost, conform to this rule; and the most humble novelist, who seeks to confer or receive amusement from his labours, may, without presumption, apply to prose fiction a licence, or rather a rule, from the adoption of which so many exquisite combinations of human feeling have resulted in the highest specimens of poetry.
The circumstance on which my story rests was suggested in casual conversation. It was commenced partly as a source of amusement, and partly as an expedient for exercising any untried resources of mind. Other motives were mingled with these as the work proceeded. I am by no means indifferent to the manner in which whatever moral tendencies exist in the sentiments or characters it contains shall affect the reader; yet my chief concern in this respect has been limited to the avoiding the enervating effects of the novels of the present day, and to the exhibition of the amiableness of domestic affection, and the excellence of universal virtue. The opinions which naturally spring from the character and situation of the hero are by no means to be conceived as existing always in my own conviction; nor is any inference justly to be drawn from the following pages as prejudicing any philosophical doctrine of whatever kind.
It is a subject also of additional interest to the author that this story was begun in the majestic region where the scene is principally laid, and in society which cannot cease to be regretted. I passed the summer of 1816 in the environs of Geneva. The season was cold and rainy, and in the evenings we crowded around a blazing wood fire, and occasionally amused ourselves with some German stories of ghosts, which happened to fall into our hands. These tales excited in us a playful desire of imitation. Two other friends (a tale from the pen of one of whom would be far more acceptable to the public than anything I can ever hope to produce) and myself agreed to write each a story founded on some supernatural occurrence.
The weather, however, suddenly became serene; and my two friends left me on a journey among the Alps, and lost, in the magnificent scenes which they present, all memory of their ghostly visions. The following tale is the only one which has been completed.
Marlow, September, 1817
Did I request thee, Maker, from my clayFrom darkness to promote me?
To mould me man? Did I solicit thee PARADISE LOST
Volume One
Letter One
TO MRS. SAVILLE, ENGLAND.
St. Petersburgh, Dec. 11th, 17 – .
You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings. I arrived here yesterday; and my first task is to assure my dear sister of my welfare, and increasing confidence in the success of my undertaking.
I am already far north of London; and as I walk in the streets of Petersburgh, I feel a cold northern breeze play upon my cheeks, which braces my nerves, and fills me with delight. Do you understand this feeling? This breeze, which has travelled from the regions towards which I am advancing, gives me a foretaste of those icy climes. Inspirited by this wind of promise, my day dreams become more fervent and vivid. I try in vain to be persuaded that the pole is the seat of frost and desolation; it ever presents itself to my imagination as the region of beauty and delight. There, Margaret, the sun is for ever visible; its broad disk just skirting the horizon, and diffusing a perpetual splendour. There – for with your leave, my sister, I will put some trust in preceding navigators – there snow and frost are banished; and, sailing over a calm sea, we may be wafted to a land surpassing in wonders and in beauty every region hitherto discovered on the habitable globe. Its productions and features may be without example, as the phænomena of the havenly bodies undoubtedly are in those undiscovered solitudes. What may not be expected in a country of eternal light? I may there discover the wondrous power which attracts the needle; and may regulate a thousand celestial observations, that require only this voyage to render their seeming eccentricities consistent for ever. I shall satiate my ardent curiosity with the sight of a part of the world never before visited, and may tread a land never before imprinted by the foot of man. These are my enticements, and they are sufficient to conquer all fear of danger or death, and to induce me to commence this laborious voyage with the joy a child feels when he embarks in a little boat, with his holiday mates, on an expedition of discovery up his native river. But, supposing all these conjectures to be false, you cannot contest the inestimable benefit which I shall confer on all mankind to the last generation, by discovering a passage near the pole to those countries, to reach which at present so many months are requisite; or by ascertaining the secret of the magnet, which, if at all possible, can only be effected by an undertaking such as mine.
These reflections have dispelled the agitation with which I began my letter, and I feel my heart glow with an enthusiasm which elevates me to heaven; for nothing contributes so much to tranquillize the mind as a steady purpose – a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye. This expedition has been the favourite dream of my early years. I have read with ardour the accounts of the various voyages which have been made in the prospect of arriving at the North Pacific Ocean through the seas which surround the pole. You may remember, that a history of all the voyages made for purposes of discovery composed the whole of our good uncle Thomas’s library. My education was neglected, yet I was passionately fond of reading. These volumes were my study day and night, and my familiarity with them increased that regret which I had felt, as a child, on learning that my father’s dying injunction had forbidden my uncle to allow me to embark in a sea-faring life.
These visions faded when I perused, for the first time, those poets whose effusions entranced my soul, and lifted it to heaven. I also became a poet, and for one year lived in a Paradise of my own creation; I imagined that I also might obtain a niche in the temple where the names of Homer and Shakespeare are consecrated. You are well acquainted with my failure, and how heavily I bore the disappointment. But just at that time I inherited the fortune of my cousin, and my thoughts were turned into the channel of their earlier bent.
Six years have passed since I resolved on my present undertaking. I can, even now, remember the hour from which I dedicated myself to this great enterprise. I commenced by inuring my body to hardship. I accompanied the whale-fishers on several expeditions to the North Sea; I voluntarily endured cold, famine, thirst, and want of sleep; I often worked harder than the common sailors during the day, and devoted my hights to the study of mathematics, the theory of medicine, and those branches of physical science from which a naval adventurer might derive the greatest practical advantage. Twice I actually hired myself as an undermate in a Greenland whaler, and acquitted myself to admiration. I must own I felt a little proud, when my captain offered me the second dignity in the vessel, and entreated me to remain with the greatest earnestness; so valuable did he consider my services.
And now, dear Margaret, do I not deserve to accomplish some great purpose. My life might have been passed in case and luxury; but I preferred glory to every enticement that wealth placed in my path. Oh, that some encouraging voice would answer in the affirmative! My courage and my resolution is firm; but my hopes fluctuate, and my spirits are often depressed. I am about to proceed on a long and difficult voyage; the emergencies of which will demand all my fortitude: I am required not only to raise the spirits of others, but sometimes to sustain my own, when their’s are failing.
This is the most favourable period for travelling in Russia. They fly quickly over the snow in their sledges; the motion is pleasant, and, in my opinion, far more agreeable than that of an English stage-coach. The cold is not excessive, if you are wrapt in furs, a dress which I have already adopted; for there is a great difference between walking the deck and remaining seated motionless for hours, when no exercise prevents the blood from actually freezing in your veins. I have no ambition to lose my life on the post-road between St. Petersburgh and Archangel.
I shall depart for the latter town in a fortnight or three weeks; and my intention is to hire a ship there, which can easily be done by paying the insurance for the owner, and to engage as many sailors as I think necessary among those who are accustomed to the whale-fishing. I do not intend to sail until the month of June: and when shall I return? Ah, dear sister, how can I answer this question? If I succeed, many, many months, perhaps years, will pass before you and I may meet. If I fail, you will see me again soon, or never.
Farewell, my dear, excellent, Margaret. Heaven shower down blessings on you, and save me, that I may again and again testify my gratitude for all your love and kindness.
Your affectionate brother,
R. WALTON.
Letter Two
TO MRS. SAVILLE, ENGLAND.
Archangel, 28th March, 17 – .
How slowly the time passes here, encompassed as I am by frost and snow; yet a second step is taken towards my enterprise. I have hired a vessel,and am occupied in collecting my sailors; those whom I have already engaged appear to be men on whom I can depend, and are certainly possessed of dauntless courage.
But I have one want which I have never yet been able to satisfy; and the absence of the object of which I now feel as a most severe evil. I have no friend, Margaret: when I am glowing with the enthusiasm of success, there will be none to participate my joy; if I am assailed by disappointment, no one will endeavour to sustain me in dejection. I shall commit my thoughts to paper, it is true; but that is a poor medium for the communication of feeling. I desire the company of a man who could sympathize with me; whose eyes would reply to mine. You may deem me romantic, my dear sister, but I bitterly feel the want of a friend. I have no one near me, gentle yet courageous, possessed of a cultivated as well as of a capacious mind, whose tastes are like my own, to approve or amend my plans. How would such a friend repair the faults of your poor brother! I am too ardent in execution, and too impatient of difficulties. But it is a still greater evil to me that I am self-educated: for the first fourteen years of my life I ran wild on a common, and read nothing but our uncle Thomas’s books of voyages. At that age I became acquainted with the celebrated poets of our own country; but it was only when it had ceased to be in my power to derive its most important benefits from such a conviction, that I perceived the necessity of becoming acquainted with more languages than that of my native country. Now I am twenty-eight, and am in reality more illiterate than many school-boys of fifteen. It is true that I have thought more, and that my day dreams are more extended and magnificent; but they want (as the painters call it) keeping; and I greatly need a friend who would have sense enough not to despise me as romantic, and affection enough for me to endeavour to regulate my mind.
Well, these are useless complaints; I shall certainly find no friend on the wide ocean, nor even here in Archangel, among merchants and seamen. Yet some feelings, unallied to the dross of human nature, beat even in these rugged bosoms. My lieutenant, for instance, is a man of wonderful courage and enterprise; he is madly desirous of glory. He is an Englishman, and in the midst of national and professional prejudices, unsoftened by cultivation, retains some of the noblest endowments of humanity. I first became acquainted with him on board a whale vessel: finding that he was unemployed in this city, I easily engaged him to assist in my enterprise.
The master is a person of an excellent disposition, and is remarkable in the ship for his gentleness, and the mildness of his discipline. He is, indeed, of so amiable a nature, that he will not hunt (a favourite, and almost the only amusement here), because he cannot endure to spill blood. He is, moreover, heroically generous. Some years ago he loved a young Russian lady, of moderate fortune; and having amassed a considerable sum in prize-money, the father of the girl consented to the match. He saw his mistress once before the destined ceremony; but she was bathed in tears, and, throwing herself at his feet, entreated him to spare her, confessing at the same time that she loved another, but that he was poor, and that her father would never consent to the union. My generous friend reassured the suppliant, and on being informed of the name of her lover instantly abandoned his pursuit. He had already bought a farm with his money, on which he had designed to pass the remainder of his life; but he bestowed the whole on his rival, together with the remains of his prize-money to purchase stock, and then himself solicited the young woman’s father to consent to her marriage with her lover. But the old man decidedly refused, thinking himself bound in honour to my friend; who, when he found the father inexorable, quitted his country, nor returned until he heard that his former mistress was married according to her inclinations. “What a noble fellow!” you will exclaim. He is so; but then he has passed all his life on board a vessel, and has scarcely an idea beyond the rope and the shroud.
But do not suppose that, because I complain a little, or because I can conceive a consolation for my toils which I may never know, that I am wavering in my resolutions. Those are as fixed as fate; and my voyage is only now delayed until the weather shall permit my embarkation. The winter has been dreadfully severe; but the spring promises well, and it is considered as a remarkably early season; so that, perhaps, I may sail sooner than I expected. I shall do nothing rashly; you know me sufficiently to confide in my prudence and considerateness whenever the safety of others is committed to my care.
I cannot describe to you my sensations on the near prospect of my undertaking. It is impossible to communicate to you a conception of the trembling sensation, half pleasurable and half fearful, with which I am preparing to depart. I am going to unexplored regions, to “the land of mist and snow;” but I shall kill no albatross, therefore do not be alarmed for my safety.
Shall I meet you again, after having traversed immense seas, and returned by the most southern cape of Africa or America? I dare not expect such success, yet I cannot bear to look on the reverse of the picture. Continue to write to me by every opportunity: I may receive your letters (though the chance is very doubtful) on some occasions when I need them most to support my spirits. I love you very tenderly. Remember me with affection, should you never hear from me again.
Your affectionate brother,
ROBERT WALTON.
Letter Three
TO MRS. SAVILLE, ENGLAND.
July 7th, 17 – .
My Dear Sister, I write a few lines in haste, to say that I am safe, and well advanced on my voyage. This letter will reach England by a merchant-man now on its homeward voyage from Archangel; more fortunate than I, who may not see my native land, perhaps, for many years. I am, however, in good spirits: my men are bold, and apparently firm of purpose; nor do the floating sheets of ice that continually pass us, indicating the dangers of the region towards which we are advancing, appear to dismay them. We have already reached a very high latitude; but it is the height of summer, and although not so warm as in England, the southern gales, which blow us speedily towards those shores which I so ardently desire to attain, breathe a degree of renovating warmth which I had not expected.
No incidents have hitherto befallen us, that would make a figure in a letter. One or two stiff gales, and the breaking of a mast, are accidents which experienced navigators scarcely remember to record; and I shall be well content, if nothing worse happen to us during our voyage.
Adieu, my dear Margaret. Be assured, that for my own sake, as well as yours, I will not rashly encounter danger. I will be cool, persevering, and prudent.
Remember me to all my English friends.
Most affectionately yours, R. W.
Letter Four
TO MRS. SAVILLE, ENGLAND.
August 5th, 17 – .
So strange an accident has happened to us, that I cannot forbear recording it, although it is very probable that you will see me before these papers can come into your possession.
Last Monday (July 31st), we were nearly surrounded by ice, which closed in the ship on all sides, scarcely leaving her the sea room in which she floated. Our situation was somewhat dangerous, especially as we were compassed round by a very thick fog. We accordingly lay to, hoping that some change would take place in the atmosphere and weather.
About two o’clock the mist cleared away, and we beheld, stretched out in every direction, vast and irregular plains of ice, which seemed to have no end. Some of my comrades groaned, and my own mind began to grow watchful with anxious thoughts, when a strange sight suddenly attracted our attention, and diverted our solicitude from our own situation. We perceived a low carriage, fixed on a sledge and drawn by dogs, pass on towards the north, at the distance of half a mile: a being which had the shape of a man, but apparently of gigantic stature, sat in the sledge, and guided the dogs. We watched the rapid progress of the traveller with our telescopes, until he was lost among the distant inequalities of the ice.
This appearance excited our unqualified wonder. We were, as we believed, many hundred miles from any land, but this apparition seemed to denote that it was not, in reality, so distant as we had supposed. Shut in, however, by ice, it was impossible to follow his track, which we had observed with the greatest attention.
About two hours after this occurrence, we heard the ground sea, and before night the ice broke, and freed our ship. We, however, lay to until the morning, fearing to encounter in the dark those large loose masses which float about after the breaking up of the ice. I profited of this time to rest for a few hours.
In the morning, however, as soon as it was light, I went upon deck, and found all the sailors busy on one side of the vessel, apparently talking to some one in the sea. It was, in fact, a sledge, like that we had seen before, which had drifted towards us in the night, on a large fragment of ice. Only one dog remained alive; but there was a human being within it, whom the sailors were persuading to enter the vessel. He was not, as the other traveller seemed to be, a savage inhabitant of some undiscovered island, but an European. When I appeared on deck, the master said, “Here is our captain, and he will not allow you to perish on the open sea.”
On perceiving me, the stranger addressed me in English, although with a foreign accent. “Before I come on board your vessel,” said he, “will you have the kindness to inform me whither you are bound?”
You may conceive my astonishment on hearing such a question addressed to me from a man on the brink of destruction, and to whom I should have supposed that my vessel would have been a resource which he would not have exchanged for the most precious wealth the earth can afford. I replied, however, that we were on a voyage of discovery towards the northern pole.
Upon hearing this he appeared satisfied, and consented to come on board. Good God! Margaret, if you had seen the man who thus capitulated for his safety, your surprise would have been boundless. His limbs were nearly frozen, and his body dreadfully emaciated by fatigue and suffering. I never saw a man in so wretched a condition. We attempted to carry him into the cabin; but as soon as he had quitted the fresh air, he fainted. We accordingly brought him back to the deck, and restored him to animation by rubbing him with brandy, and forcing him to swallow a small quantity. As soon as he shewed signs of life, we wrapped him up in blankets, and placed him near the chimney of the kitchen-stove. By slow degrees he recovered, and ate a little soup, which restored him wonderfully.
Two days passed in this manner before he was able to speak; and I often feared that his sufferings had deprived him of understanding. When he had in some measure recovered, I removed him to my own cabin, and attended on him as much as my duty would permit. I never saw a more interesting creature: his eyes have generally an expression of wildness, and even madness; but there are moments when, if any one performs an act of kindness towards him, or does him any the most trifling service, his whole countenance is lighted up, as it were, with a beam of benevolence and sweetness that I never saw equalled. But he is generally melancholy and despairing; and sometimes he gnashes his teeth, as if impatient of the weight of woes that oppresses him.
When my guest was a little recovered, I had great trouble to keep off the men, who wished to ask him a thousand questions; but I would not allow him to be tormented by their idle curiosity, in a state of body and mind whose restoration evidently depended upon entire repose. Once, however, the lieutenant asked, Why he had come so far upon the ice in so strange a vehicle?
His countenance instantly assumed an aspect of the deepest gloom; and he replied, “To seek one who fled from me.”
“And did the man whom you pursued travel in the same fashion?”
“Yes.”
“Then I fancy we have seen him; for, the day before we picked you up, we saw some dogs drawing a sledge, with a man in it, across the ice.”
This aroused the stranger’s attention; and he asked a multitude of questions concerning the route which the dæmon, as he called him, had pursued. Soon after, when he was alone with me, he said, “I have, doubtless, excited your curiosity, as well as that of these good people; but you are too considerate to make inquiries.”
“Certainly; it would indeed be very impertinent and inhuman in me to trouble you with any inquisitiveness of mine.”
“And yet you rescued me from a strange and perilous situation; you have benevolently restored me to life.”
Soon after this he inquired, if I thought that the breaking up of the ice had destroyed the other sledge? I replied, that I could not answer with any degree of certainty; for the ice had not broken until near midnight, and the traveller might have arrived at a place of safety before that time; but of this I could not judge.
From this time the stranger seemed very eager to be upon deck, to watch for the sledge which had before appeared; but I have persuaded him to remain in the cabin, for he is far too weak to sustain the rawness of the atmosphere. But I have promised that some one should watch for him, and give him instant notice if any new object should appear in sight.
Such is my journal of what relates to this strange occurrence up to the present day. The stranger has gradually improved in health, but is very silent, and appears uneasy when any one except myself enters his cabin. Yet his manners are so conciliating and gentle, that the sailors are all interested in him, although they have had very little communication with him. For my own part, I begin to love him as a brother; and his constant and deep grief fills me with sympathy and compassion. He must have been a noble creature in his better days, being even now in wreck so attractive and amiable.
I said in one of my letters, my dear Margaret, that I should find no friend on the wide ocean; yet I have found a man who, before his spirit had been broken by misery, I should have been happy to have possessed as the brother of my heart.
I shall continue my journal concerning the stranger at intervals, should I have any fresh incidents to record.
August 13th, 17 – .
My affection for my guest increases every day. He excites at once my admiration and my pity to an astonishing degree. How can I see so noble a creature destroyed by misery without feeling the most poignant grief? He is so gentle, yet so wise; his mind is so cultivated; and when he speaks, although his words are culled with the choicest art, yet they flow with rapidity and unparalleled eloquence.
He is now much recovered from his illness, and is continually on the deck, apparently watching for the sledge that preceded his own. Yet, although unhappy, he is not so utterly occupied by his own misery, but that he interests himself deeply in the employments of others. He has asked me many questions concerning my design; and I have related my little history frankly to him. He appeared pleased with the confidence, and suggested several alterations in my plan, which I shall find exceedingly useful. There is no pedantry in his manner; but all he does appears to spring solely from the interest he instinctively takes in the welfare of those who surround him. He is often overcome by gloom, and then he sits by himself, and tries to overcome all that is sullen or unsocial in his humour. These paroxysms pass from him like a cloud from before the sun, though his dejection never leaves him. I have endeavoured to win his confidence; and I trust that I have succeeded. One day I mentioned to him the desire I had always felt of finding a friend who might sympathize with me, and direct me by his counsel. I said, I did not belong to that class of men who are offended by advice. “I am self-educated, and perhaps I hardly rely sufficiently upon my own powers. I wish therefore that my companion should be wiser and more experienced than myself, to confirm and support me; nor have I believed it impossible to find a true friend.”
“I agree with you,” replied the stranger, “in believing that friendship is not only a desirable, but a possible acquisition. I once had a friend, the most noble of human creatures, and am entitled, therefore, to judge respecting friendship. You have hope, and the world before you, and have no cause for despair. But I – I have lost every thing, and cannot begin life anew.”
As he said this, his countenance became expressive of a calm settled grief, that touched me to the heart. But he was silent, and presently retired to his cabin.
Even broken in spirit as he is, no one can feel more deeply than he does the beauties of nature. The starry sky, the sea, and every sight afforded by these wonderful regions, seems still to have the power of elevating his soul from earth. Such a man has a double existence: he may suffer misery, and be overwhelmed by disappointments, yet when he has retired into himself, he will be like a celestial spirit, that has a halo around him, within whose circle no grief or folly ventures.
Will you laugh at the enthusiasm I express concerning this divine wanderer? If you do, you must have certainly lost that simplicity which was once your characteristic charm. Yet, if you will, smile at the warmth of my expressions, while I find every day new causes for repeating them.
August 19th, 17 – .
Yesterday the stranger said to me, “You may easily perceive, Captain Walton, that I have suffered great and unparalleled misfortunes. I had determined, once, that the memory of these evils should die with me; but you have won me to alter my determination. You seek for knowledge and wisdom, as I once did; and I ardently hope that the gratification of your wishes may not be a serpent to sting you, as mine has been. I do not know that the relation of my misfortunes will be useful to you, yet, if you are inclined, listen to my tale. I believe that the strange incidents connected with it will afford a view of nature, which may enlarge your faculties and understanding. You will hear of powers and occurrences, such as you have been accustomed to believe impossible: but I do not doubt that my tale conveys in its series internal evidence of the truth of the events of which it is composed.”
You may easily conceive that I was much gratified by the offered communication; yet I could not endure that he should renew his grief by a recital of his misfortunes. I felt the greatest eagerness to hear the promised narrative, partly from curiosity, and partly from a strong desire to ameliorate his fate, if it were in my power. I expressed these feelings in my answer.
“I thank you,” he replied, “for your sympathy, but it is useless; my fate is nearly fulfilled. I wait but for one event, and then I shall repose in peace. I understand your feeling,” continued he, perceiving that I wished to interrupt him; “but you are mistaken, my friend, if thus you will allow me to name you; nothing can alter my destiny: listen to my history, and you will perceive how irrevocably it is determined.”
He then told me, that he would commence his narrative the next day when I should be at leisure. This promise drew from me the warmest thanks. I have resolved every night, when I am not engaged, to record, as nearly as possible in his own words, what he has related during the day. If I should be engaged, I will at least make notes. This manuscript will doubtless afford you the greatest pleasure: but to me, who know him, and who hear it from his own lips, with what interest and sympathy shall I read it in some future day!
Chapter One
I Am by birth a Genevese; and my family is one of the most distinguished of that republic. My ancestors had been for many years counsellors and syndics; and my father had filled several public situations with honour and reputation. He was respected by all who knew him for his integrity and indefatigable attention to public business. He passed his younger days perpetually occupied by the affairs of his country; and it was not until the decline of life that he thought of marrying, and bestowing on the state sons who might carry his virtues and his name down to posterity.
As the circumstances of his marriage illustrate his character, I cannot refrain from relating them. One of his most intimate friends was a merchant, who, from a flourishing state, fell, through numerous mischances, into poverty. This man, whose name was Beaufort, was of a proud and unbending disposition, and could not bear to live in poverty and oblivion in the same country where he had formerly been distinguished for his rank and magnificence. Having paid his debts, therefore, in the most honourable manner, he retreated with his daughter to the town of Lucerne, where he lived unknown and in wretchedness. My father loved Beaufort with the truest friendship, and was deeply grieved by his retreat in these unfortunate circumstances. He grieved also for the loss of his society, and resolved to seek him out and endeavour to persuade him to begin the world again through his credit and assistance.
Beaufort had taken effectual measures to conceal himself; and it was ten months before my father discovered his abode. Overjoyed at this discovery, he hastened to the house, which was situated in a mean street, near the Reuss. But when he entered, misery and despair alone welcomed him. Beaufort had saved but a very small sum of money from the wreck of his fortunes: but it was sufficient to provide him with sustenance for some months, and in the mean time he hoped to procure some respectable employment in a merchant’s house. The interval was consequently spent in inaction; his grief only became more deep and rankling, when he had leisure for reflection; and at length it took so fast hold of his mind, that at the end of three months he lay on a bed of sickness, incapable of any exertion.
His daughter attended him with the greatest tenderness; but she saw with despair that their little fund was rapidly decreasing, and that there was no other prospect of support. But Caroline Beaufort possesed a mind of an uncommon mould; and her courage rose to support her in her adversity. She procured plain work; she plaited straw; and by various means contrived to earn a pittance scarcely sufficient to support life.
