Published Works
Frankenstein (The Modern Prometheus)
1818
Frankenstein is a story within a story about an explorer who meets Victor Frankenstein, who has created a living dead creature. Victor thinks his creature is a monster, and it indeeds performs grisly acts, but Victor had a chance to stop him, so is the creature really the monster of the story? Explore ethics, emotions, and madness in this gripping tale.
Valperga
1823
Valperga is Shelley's 1823 historical and fictional account of the life of Castruccio Castracani who lived in the 14th century. You don't need to know anything about Italian history to become immersed and interested in this political novel. The novel follows the life of Castruccio, from his birth and the exile of his Ghibelline family by the Guelphs to his rise as a commanding, powerful and tyrannical prince. Shelley writes about Castruccio's political and social endeavors which intertwine with the prince's relationships with two women, the devout, loyal, and powerful Guelph Euthanasia, and the eccentric and heretical Beatrice. This novel of loyalty, love, war, religion, politics, and the desire for power, is a novel that anyone seeking out more work by Mary Shelley should read.
The Last Man
1826
A futuristic story of tragic love and of the gradual extermination of the human race by plague, The Last Man is Mary Shelley's most important novel after Frankenstein. With intriguing portraits of Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron, the novel offers a vision of the future that expresses a reaction against Romanticism, and demonstrates the failure of the imagination and of art to redeem the doomed characters.
