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A young adult biography of Frankenstein's profound young author, Mary Shelley, coinciding with the 200th anniversary of its publication, told through free verse and 300+ full-bleed illustrations. Mary Shelley first began penning Frankenstein as part of a dare to write a ghost story, but the seeds of that story were planted long before that night. Mary, just nineteen years old at the time, had been living on her own for three years and had already lost a baby days after birth. She was deeply in love with famed poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, a mad man who both enthralled and terrified her, and her relationship with him was rife with scandal and ridicule. But rather than let it crush her, Mary fueled her grief, pain, and passion into a book that the world has still not forgotten 200 years later. Dark, intense, and beautiful, this free-verse novel with over 300 pages of gorgeous black-and-white watercolor illustrations is a unique and unforgettable depiction of one of the greatest authors of all time.
Publication Year: 2018
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This is a damn good poetic biography. Obviously there are some moments of creative license, but overall it's faithful. Lita Judge created a beautiful, emotional narrative. The art is fantastic, all of the ghostly watercolor silhouettes add so much of an undercurrent to an already incredibly engaging tale. Most of us know the basic outline of Frankenstein's conception - a bet, placed during a summer vacation in Switzerland between Byron, Percy Shelley, Mary Shelley, and few other guests, to write a horror story. Mary, the daughter of a philosopher and Mary Wollstonecraft, smokes the men births the foundation stones of the sci-fi genre. Also, Byron and Percy Shelley suck.
We get a much richer narrative that explores Mary's perception of the mother she lost due to her birth, her tumultuous relationship with her family, Percy's seduction and mistreatment, the death of nearly all of her infants, and her determination to create. This was such a great read, you can't miss in checking it out.