Frankenstein's monster or Frankenstein's creature, also commonly known as Frankenstein, is a fictional character who first appeared in Mary Shelley's 1818 novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus as the main antagonist. Shelley's title thus compares the monster's creator, Victor Frankenstein, to the mythological character Prometheus, who fashioned humans out of clay and gave them fire.
Steel engraving (993 × 78 mm), for the frontispiece of the 1831 revised edition of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, published by Colburn and Bentley, London
The actor T. P. Cooke as the monster in an 1823 stage production of Shelley's novel
Charles Stanton Ogle in the 1910 film version
Close-up of Charles Ogle as the monster in Thomas Edison's Frankenstein (1910)
Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is an 1818 novel written by English author Mary Shelley. Frankenstein tells the story of Victor Frankenstein, a young scientist who creates a sapient creature in an unorthodox scientific experiment. Shelley started writing the story when she was 18, and the first edition was published anonymously in London on 1 January 1818, when she was 20. Her name first appeared in the second edition, which was published in Paris in 1821.
Volume I, first edition
Draft of Frankenstein ("It was on a dreary night of November that I beheld my man completed ...")
An English editorial cartoonist conceives the Irish Fenian movement as akin to Frankenstein's creature, in the wake of the Phoenix Park murders in an 1882 issue of Punch.
Illustration by Theodor von Holst from the frontispiece of the 1831 edition
