Frankenstein: the 1831 text (Penguin Classics, ed. Maurice Hindle)
The revised 1831 novel, with Mary Shelley’s own account of how she came to write it.
In 1831 Mary Shelley revised the book and wrote an introduction about a ghost-story contest by Lake Geneva. This is the version most readers grew up with.
You want the revised novel with Mary Shelley's introduction about the summer she began it, and a way to see what she changed.
What it keeps and what it changes
Keeps: the 1831 text with all of her revisions, her 1831 introduction, and Percy Shelley’s preface to the first edition.
Changes: nothing in the text. Maurice Hindle adds an introduction and notes, a collation of the 1818 and 1831 texts, and two companion pieces from the same summer: Byron’s “A Fragment” and Polidori’s “The Vampyre”.
Whose story is it?
Victor’s, and in the introduction, Mary Shelley’s.
How much time does it ask?
352 pages in paperback.
Penguin Classics, 6 May 2003, 352 pages, “based on the third edition of 1831”.
Where to find it
Buy the paperback — Bookshop.org
Other ways to get it: Paperback — Amazon · Ebook — Kobo · Kindle — Amazon
Borrow it free: Borrow on Libby · Find at your library — WorldCat
Common questions
Which Frankenstein edition has Mary Shelley’s introduction?
The 1831 text. Her introduction, dated London, 15 October 1831, describes how the story came to her during a ghost-story contest with Byron, Percy Shelley and John Polidori. Penguin’s Maurice Hindle edition prints the 1831 text with that introduction; Oxford’s 1818 edition prints it as an appendix.
More Frankensteins: Frankenstein: The 1818 Text (Penguin Classics) · Frankenstein: The 1818 Text (Oxford World’s Classics) · The Norton Critical Edition, third edition