Shelley, M. ( 1816 ). " Frankenstein - Draft Notebook A ", in The Shelley-Godwin Archive , c. 56, fol. 1v . Retrieved from The Shelley-Godwin Archive Transcription from Shelley, M. ( 1816 ). " Frankenstein - Draft Notebook A ", in The Shelley-Godwin Archive , c. 56, fol. 1v . Retrieved from The Shelley-Godwin Archive If you have a spare hour or ninety, have a browse through the Beta version of the Shelley-Godwin Archive , a project to make available in digital format the handwritten manuscripts of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Shelley, William Godwin, and Mary Wollstonecraft. So far only Frankenstein has been scanned, but that's plenty to get excited about (well, for us editors, anyway). You can read the entire manuscript online, together with the transcription and highlighting of Percy Shelley's edits and alterations to Mary Shelley's text. It's an opportunity to examine a classic author's writi...

Many people say they read fiction for pleasure and escapism, as well as the thrill of facing their fears from the safety of a comfortable armchair. The horror, thriller, and suspense genres have always been immensely popular with readers. But what about the authors who delve into the world of their nightmares in order to bring their readers tales that will prickle the hairs on the backs of their necks? What type of person confronts their personal darkness and then invents a story around it? Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley had dealt with death intensely, and often, during her young life. Her own mother died when she was only a few days old, her half-sister and her lover's wife both committed suicide, and she’d already lost three babies by the time she came to write Frankenstein . It seems death was a theme that Mary mulled over, even though she may have been a normal, and happy, young woman in many other ways. During a holiday, Mary, her husband Percy Bysshe Shelley, and their friend L...