---
title: "Frankenstein"
chunk: 6/6
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankenstein"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:04:32.694815+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

The 1931 film, with Boris Karloff playing the monster, is considered the most well-known portrayal of Frankenstein. The Hammer Horror films focused on the character of Dr Frankenstein (played by Peter Cushing in six films beginning with the 1957 film) rather than his monster.
In December 1945, the Gilberton Company issued a comic book version of Frankenstein as No. 26 in its long-running Classics Illustrated series, with illustrations by Robert Hayward Webb and Ann Brewster. The title went through nineteen printings between 1945 and 1971, and has been praised by comics historian Mike Benton as "probably the most faithful adaptation of the original novel -- movies included."
Manga artist and writer Junji Ito, best known for his horror work, published a comics adaptation of Frankenstein, which won an Eisner Award in 2019 for “Best Adaptation from Another Medium.”

== See also ==

== Notes ==

== References ==

== Sources ==

== Further reading ==
Holmes, Richard (21 December 2017). "Out of Control". The New York Review of Books. Archived from the original on 14 December 2017. Retrieved 29 December 2024. After two hundred years, how exactly are we to go back to Mary Shelley's 'Frankenstein' itself, as distinct from its proliferating, multimedia myth?, review of:
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, Or, The Modern Prometheus: Annotated for Scientists, Engineers, and Creators of All Kinds, edited by David H. Guston, Ed Finn, and Jason Scott Robert, MIT Press, 277 pp.
Mary Shelley, The New Annotated Frankenstein, edited and with a foreword and notes by Leslie S. Klinger, Liveright, 352 pp.), The New York Review of Books, vol. LXIV, no. 20 (21 December 2017), pp. 38, 40–41.

=== Editions ===

==== 1818 text ====
Frankenstein: 1818 text (Oxford University Press, 2009). Edited with an introduction and notes by Marilyn Butler.
The New Annotated Frankenstein. (Overnight, 2017). Edited and with supplementary texts by Leslie S. Klinger.
Frankenstein: The 1818 Text (Penguin Books, 2018). Edited with an introduction by Charlotte Gordon.
Frankenstein, Or, The Modern Prometheus: Annotated for Scientists, Engineers, and Creators of All Kinds, edited by David H. Guston, Ed Finn, and Jason Scott Robert, MIT Press, 277 pp. doi:10.7551/mitpress/10815.001.0001

==== 1831 text ====
Three Gothic Novels (Penguin English Library, 1968). Edited by Peter Fairclough, With an introductory essay by Mario Praz. Also includes the full texts of Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto and William Beckford's Vathek.
Frankenstein (Oxford University Press, 2008). Edited with an introduction and notes by M. K. Joseph.

=== Differences between 1818 and 1831 text ===
Changes include: 

The epigraph from Milton's Paradise Lost has been removed.
Chapter One is expanded and split into two chapters.
Elizabeth is changed from Victor's cousin to an orphan.
Victor is portrayed more kindly in the original text. In the 1831 edition, Shelley is more critical of his decisions and actions.
Shelley removed many references to scientific ideas which were popular around the time she wrote the 1818 edition of the book.
Characters in the 1831 version have some dialogue removed entirely, while others receive new dialogue.

== External links ==

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley: Chronology and Resources at Romantic Circles
"Frankenstein: a hypertext resource". English Department. University of Saskatchewan.
Frankenstein at SparkNotes
Editions

 Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus 1818 edition at Project Gutenberg

 Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus 1831 edition at Project Gutenberg
Frankenstein at Romantic Circles
online texts of 1818 and 1831 editions and copious annotations
 Frankenstein public domain audiobook at LibriVox
Frankenstein at Standard Ebooks
Sources

Shelley's notebooks with her handwritten draft of Frankenstein
Volume one Archived 10 August 2019 at the Wayback Machine
Volume two Archived 30 January 2018 at the Wayback Machine
Reception

On Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, a review by Percy Bysshe Shelley