Abstract
This chapter analyses how a few illustrators have fully enriched a text which had been traditionally mistreated and simplified. Starting with Holst, we cross the Atlantic to Nino Carbé’s visual interpretation and the doppelgänger motif. Lynd Ward explores the socio-political consequences of Victor’s behaviour, while Everett Henry reflects on the creature as an unseen presence. In the same line, Moser reads the novel as a treatise on human nature. A feminist approach will be offered by Broutin, Huyette, and Odriozola, who dwell on the female daemon and the usurpation of the female body. Finally, we consider Wrightson and Grimly, and the steampunk aesthetic by Basic and Sumberac, all of them offering their most personal interpretation of the text by embracing Frankenstein as a universal myth.
Both authors are part of the research project ‘Edgar A. Poe on-line. Text and Image’ (ref. HAR2015–64580-P), funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Victor ‘possessed by a spirit of sacrilegious pride, […] did not but commit the terrible sin of Knowledge by wanting to penetrate the sacred domains and compete with divine creation’ (translation in collaboration with Carol Margaret Davison).
Frankenstein’s Illustrated Editions
Shelley, Mary. 1831. Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus. Illustrated by Théodor Matthias von Holst and William Chevalier. London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley.
———. 1897. Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus. Illustrated with seven plates (1831 text). London/Philadelphia: Gibbings & Co./J. B. Lippincott.
———. 1922. Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus. Illustrated by Carl Lagerquist (1818 text). Boston/New York: Cornhill Publishing Company.
———. 1932. Frankenstein or, The Modern Prometheus. Illustrated by Nino Carbé (1818 text). New York: Illustrated Editions Company.
———. 1934a. Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. Introduction by Edmund Lester Pearson, illustrated in colour by Everett Henry (1831 text). New York: The Limited editions Club.
———. 1934b. Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. Illustrated by Lynd Ward (1831 text). New York: Harrison Smith and Robert Haas.
———. 1968. Frankenstein. Translated by Hannah Betjeman; preface by Michel Boujut; illustrated by Christian Broutin (1831 text). Genève: Cercle des Bibliophiles.
———. 1977. The Annotated Frankenstein. Introduction by Leonard Wolf; illustrated by Marcia Huyette (1818 text). New York: Clarkson N. Potter, Inc./Publishers.
———. 1983. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s Frankenstein. A Marvel Illustrated Novel. Introduction by Stephen King; Illustrated by Berni Wrightson (1831 text). New York: Marvel Comics Group.
———. 1984. Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. Afterword ‘Frankenstein’s Fallen Angel’ by Joyce Carol Oates; Illustrated by Barry Moser (1818 text). West Hatfield: Pennyroyal Press, 1983 (3 vols.). Reprinted in one volume by University of California Press.
———. 2012. Steampunk: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Illustrated by Zdenko Bašić and Manuel Šumberac (1831 text). Philadelphia: Running Press Classics.
———. 2013a. Gris Grimly’s Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. Foreword by Berni Wrightson; Illustrated by Gris Grimly (1818 text). New York: Balzer + Bray, HarperCollins Publishers.
———. 2013b. Frankenstein o el moderno Prometeo. Translated by Francisco Torres Oliver; Illustrated by Elena Odriozola (1831 text). Barcelona: Nørdica.
Works Cited
Anon. 1831. The London Literary Gazette, 740, November 19.
Baldick, Chris. 1987. In Frankenstein’s Shadow: Myth, Monstrosity, and 19th Century Writing. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Bann, Stephen, ed. 1994. Frankenstein, Creation and Monstrosity. London: Reaktion Books.
Bloom, Harold. 1965. Frankenstein, or the New Prometheus. Partisan Review 32: 611–618.
Kiely, Robert. 1972. The Romantic Novel in England. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Levine, George. 1973. Frankenstein and the Tradition of Realism. Novel 7 (Fall): 14–30.
Levine, George Lewis, and U.C. Knoepflmacher. 1979. The Endurance of Frankenstein: Essays on Mary Shelley’s Novel. Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: University of California Press.
Mellor, Anne K. 1988. Possessing Nature: The Female in Frankenstein. In Romanticism and Feminism, ed. Anne K. Mellor, 220–232. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Moers, Ellen. 1974. Female Gothic: The Monster’s Mother. New York Review of Books, 24–8, March 21.
Scott, Grant F. 2012. Victor’s Secret: Queer Gothic in Lynd Ward’s Illustrations to Frankenstein (1934). Word & Image 28 (2): 206–232.
Shelley, Mary. 1980. Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus (1831 text), Oxford: Oxford University Press.
———. 1998. Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus. 1818 Text. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Small, Christopher. 1973. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein: Tracing the Myth. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.
Smith, Jeanette C. 2012. The Laughing Librarian: A History of American Library Humor. Jefferson: McFarland.
Swingle, Larry J. 1973. Frankenstein’s Monster and Its Romantic Relatives: Problems of Knowledge in English Romanticism. Texas Studies in Literature and Language 15 (Spring): 51–65.
Wolf, Leonard, ed. 1977. The Annotated Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. New York: Clarkson N. Potter, Inc..
Wrightson, Bernie. 1993. Frankenstein and Me. In The Lost Frankenstein Pages, n/p. Port Washington: Apple Press/Port Publications.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Moreno, B.G., Moreno, F.G. (2018). Beyond the Filthy Form: Illustrating Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. In: Davison, C., Mulvey-Roberts, M. (eds) Global Frankenstein. Studies in Global Science Fiction. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78142-6_13
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78142-6_13
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-78141-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-78142-6
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)