Frankenstein: The Modern Prometheus and Mary Shelley's Legacy

1. Frankenstein: context Alicia Moreno Fonseca

2. Whowroteit? Mary Shelley (1797-1851) Mary Shelley was born in London, England. She married poet Percy Bysshe Shelley in 1816. Two years later, she published her most famous novel, Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus. She wrote several other books, including Valperga (1823) or The Last Man (1826). Shelley died of brain cancer on February 1, 1851, in London, England.

3. The Modern Prometheus? • Prometheus was a Greek god who moulded the human race from clay, taught them how to live, and stole fire to give to them, much to the displeasure of the Gods. His punishment for doing so was to be bound to a rock for all eternity, and have an eagle eat his liver every day.

4. How Frankenstein came to be written? • Mary and some friends where at Villa Diodati, Geneva (Switzerland). The summer of 1816, cold and rainy, was one of the worst on record. During these long days, they entertained themselves with conversations, poetry reading and ghost stories. After they hed read one ghost story, one of their friends challenged the others: each of them had to write a horror story. The inspiration for Frankenstein came to Mary Shelley when arguing with one of her friends about how Darwin had experimented with giving movement to dead matter with the potential of electrical stimulation. Then, she started writing.

5. The 19thCentury • The industrial revolution took place • End of Slavery in England (1832) • Modern Politics was born • Frankenstein kicked off the Science Fiction genre (1818) • Germany was born (1871) • Spain lost most of its empire • Charles Darwin published ''The Origin of Species'' (1859)

6. Frankenstein: context Alicia Moreno Fonseca