Frankenstein

Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel follows Victor Frankenstein, a scientist who assembles and animates a living being, and the consequences of his abandonment of that creation.

Victor Frankenstein: The ambitious scientist in Mary Shelley’s novel who creates a living being and later pursues it. His experiments and refusal to care for his creation drive the novel’s central conflict.
Mary Shelley: The English novelist who wrote Frankenstein, first published anonymously in 1818. Her authorship and revisions shaped the novel’s changing meanings and editions.
Frame story: A narrative structure in which one story encloses another through a framing situation or narrator. Walton’s letters contain Victor’s account, which in turn contains the creature’s narrative.
Frankenstein complex: A cultural fear that artificial beings may threaten or surpass their creators. The novel’s conflict became a lasting template for anxieties about human-made life.
The Sandman: An 1816 Gothic tale by E. T. A. Hoffmann about a student haunted by fears of an artificial woman. Its automaton-centered terror offers a contemporary alternative to Shelley’s created but humanlike being.
Frankenstein's creature: The living being assembled and animated by Victor Frankenstein in Mary Shelley’s novel. His account of rejection and violence complicates Victor’s claim to be the novel’s victim.
Villa Diodati: A villa near Lake Geneva where Mary Shelley, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron, and others stayed in 1816. A ghost-story challenge there helped prompt the idea that became Frankenstein.
Epistolary novel: A novel told through documents such as letters, diaries, or other written records. Walton’s correspondence gives the novel its outer documentary form.
Frankenstein in popular culture: The adaptations and references that transformed Shelley’s novel into a global cultural icon. Stage and film versions helped detach the name Frankenstein from the novel’s more complex narrative.
R.U.R.: A 1920 play by Karel Čapek in which manufactured workers revolt against their human makers. Its collective rebellion contrasts with Frankenstein’s focus on one abandoned creation.

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