Abstract
This chapter analyses how a few illustrators have fully enriched a text which had been traditionally mistreated and simplified. Starting with Holst, we cross the Atlantic to Nino Carbé’s visual interpretation and the doppelgänger motif. Lynd Ward explores the socio-political consequences of Victor’s behaviour, while Everett Henry reflects on the creature as an unseen presence. In the same line, Moser reads the novel as a treatise on human nature. A feminist approach will be offered by Broutin, Huyette, and Odriozola, who dwell on the female daemon and the usurpation of the female body. Finally, we consider Wrightson and Grimly, and the steampunk aesthetic by Basic and Sumberac, all of them offering their most personal interpretation of the text by embracing Frankenstein as a universal myth.
Both authors are part of the research project ‘Edgar A. Poe on-line. Text and Image’ (ref. HAR2015–64580-P), funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness.
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Notes
- 1.
Victor ‘possessed by a spirit of sacrilegious pride, […] did not but commit the terrible sin of Knowledge by wanting to penetrate the sacred domains and compete with divine creation’ (translation in collaboration with Carol Margaret Davison).
Frankenstein’s Illustrated Editions
Shelley, Mary. 1831. Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus. Illustrated by Théodor Matthias von Holst and William Chevalier. London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley.
———. 1897. Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus. Illustrated with seven plates (1831 text). London/Philadelphia: Gibbings & Co./J. B. Lippincott.
———. 1922. Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus. Illustrated by Carl Lagerquist (1818 text). Boston/New York: Cornhill Publishing Company.
———. 1932. Frankenstein or, The Modern Prometheus. Illustrated by Nino Carbé (1818 text). New York: Illustrated Editions Company.
———. 1934a. Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. Introduction by Edmund Lester Pearson, illustrated in colour by Everett Henry (1831 text). New York: The Limited editions Club.
———. 1934b. Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. Illustrated by Lynd Ward (1831 text). New York: Harrison Smith and Robert Haas.
———. 1968. Frankenstein. Translated by Hannah Betjeman; preface by Michel Boujut; illustrated by Christian Broutin (1831 text). Genève: Cercle des Bibliophiles.
———. 1977. The Annotated Frankenstein. Introduction by Leonard Wolf; illustrated by Marcia Huyette (1818 text). New York: Clarkson N. Potter, Inc./Publishers.
———. 1983. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s Frankenstein. A Marvel Illustrated Novel. Introduction by Stephen King; Illustrated by Berni Wrightson (1831 text). New York: Marvel Comics Group.
———. 1984. Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. Afterword ‘Frankenstein’s Fallen Angel’ by Joyce Carol Oates; Illustrated by Barry Moser (1818 text). West Hatfield: Pennyroyal Press, 1983 (3 vols.). Reprinted in one volume by University of California Press.
———. 2012. Steampunk: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Illustrated by Zdenko Bašić and Manuel Šumberac (1831 text). Philadelphia: Running Press Classics.
———. 2013a. Gris Grimly’s Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. Foreword by Berni Wrightson; Illustrated by Gris Grimly (1818 text). New York: Balzer + Bray, HarperCollins Publishers.
———. 2013b. Frankenstein o el moderno Prometeo. Translated by Francisco Torres Oliver; Illustrated by Elena Odriozola (1831 text). Barcelona: Nørdica.
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Moreno, B.G., Moreno, F.G. (2018). Beyond the Filthy Form: Illustrating Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. In: Davison, C., Mulvey-Roberts, M. (eds) Global Frankenstein. Studies in Global Science Fiction. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78142-6_13
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