Frankenstein Or, the Modern Prometheus

The California edition of the Pennyroyal Press "Frankenstein" unites the dark side of Barry Moser's art with the classic 1818 text of Mary Shelley's tale of moral transfiguration. In a vivid sequence of woodcuts, the reader witnesses the birth of the "monster" as Moser shapes him from darkness and gives him a form simultaneously ghastly in its malice and transfixing in its suffering.

Mary Shelley was born Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin on August 30, 1797 in London, the daughter of William Godwin--a radical philosopher and novelist, and Mary Wollstonecraft--a renowned feminist and the author of <b>Vindication of the Rights of Woman</b>. She eloped to France with Shelley in 1814, although they were not married until 1816, after the suicide of his first wife. She began work on <b>Frankenstein</b> in 1816 in Switzerland, while they were staying with Lord Byron, and it was published in 1818 to immediate acclaim. She died in London in 1851.