My mom has taught college literature my whole life, and she is very well versed in this story. Before starting my first read of this ever (!! I'm 27.. I can't believe this is my first time) I talked to her about the frame narrative use and she gave me an awesome breakdown of context for the story.

• If you can, read the 1818 version! That is the original. The 1831 version is the one Shelley's husband edited to make Victor Frankenstein more sympathetic. In the original, Elizabeth is Victor’s cousin, not some random Italian orphan. At the end of Chapter 1 in the 1831 version you see a hint of this when Victor says “we called each other family by the name of cousin”
• Shelley drew inspiration from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, another frame narrative tale. That story is about a sailor who kills an albatross and sets off a chain of unfortunate events, with the moral of the story being about loving God's creations. In the second letter (on page 20 in my book), Shelley makes a direct reference to this when Walton says 'I shall kill no albatross' -- and readers of Frankenstein in the 19th century would have understood that reference.
• A fun fact: as a little girl Shelley actually heard Coleridge read the poem in person! She attended a gathering of literature minds and hid behind the couch while she listened.
• Before Shelley wrote Frankenstein, she had actually recently suffered a miscarriage, and that experience impacted her approach to the themes of creation. And when she actually wrote it, she was pregnant again!
• Perhaps the most well known fact was that this was written as part of a contest! Shelley and a bunch of other writers were in Geneva one night and the weather was really bad, so they all wrote ghost stories. She, obviously, won the competition :)

Hope this post helps all you Pagebounders!! I found all this SUPER exciting.