A timeless, terrifying tale of one man's obsession to create life--and the monster that became his legacy. "If ever a book needed to be placed in context, it's Frankenstein" (The New York Times Book Review).

ENDURING LITERATURE ILLUMINATED BY PRACTICAL SCHOLARSHIP

A timeless, terrifying tale of one man's obsession to create life--and the monster that became his legacy.

EACH ENRICHED CLASSIC EDITION INCLUDES:
- A concise introduction that gives readers important background information
- A chronology of the author's life and work
- A...

Taken from an ancient text found abandoned in a cave, The Last Man ends in 2100, "the last year of the world." A devastating worldwide plague has annihilated all of humanity except for one man, who chronicles the world's demise. This novel of apocalyptic horror, originally published in 1826, was rejected in its time and was out of print from 1833 to 1965, when the first Bison Books edition appeared. Mary Shelley (1797-1851) was the author of many works, the best known of which is the classic Frankenstein. Judith Tarr is the author of more than thirty novels of fantasy and historical fiction,...

"Brings together the pwerful works of a mother/daughter combination... These novels will prove a foundation for any college-level course on literature and feminism."
--The Bookwatch

"A gripping tale of incestuous desire... vitalized by the powerful evocation of nature and the bolder passions of full-blown Romanticism."
--Belles Lettres

This volume for the first time brings together three extraordinary works of fiction by Mary Wollstonecraft, generally recognized as the mother of the feminist movement, and Mary Shelley.

Amateur and professional companies will find this to be the most successful Frankenstein ever adapted for the stage.

Purchase one of 1st World Library's Classic Books and help support our free internet library of downloadable eBooks. 1st World Library-Literary Society is a non-profit educational organization. Visit us online at www.1stWorldLibrary.ORG - 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...

The act of writing this novella distracted Mary Shelley from her grief after the deaths of her one-year-old daughter Clara at Venice in September 1818 and her three-year-old son William in June 1819 in Rome. These losses plunged Mary Shelley into a depression that distanced her emotionally and sexually from Percy Shelley and he left her, as he put it, "on the hearth of pale despair." An important and little-known tale from the author of Frankenstein.

At length my friend, who had taken up some of the leaves strewed about, exclaimed, "This _is_ the Sibyl's cave; these are Sibylline leaves." On examination, we found that all the leaves, bark, and other substances, were traced with written characters. What appeared to us more astonishing, was that these writings were expressed in various languages: some unknown to my companion, ancient Chaldee, and Egyptian hieroglyphics, old as the Pyramids. Stranger still, some were in modern dialects, English and Italian. We could make out little by the dim light, but they seemed to contain prophecies,...

The three main characters in Mathilda are clearly Mary Shelley herself, Godwin and Percy Bysshe Shelley -- and their relations can easily be reassorted to correspond with their lives. An important and little-known tale from the author of Frankenstein. Mathilda is the second long work of fiction of Mary Shelley, written between August 1819 and February 1820.