A bolt-necked monster opens his eyes, lifts himself from his laboratory table, then lurches and stumbles toward his creator. Do we know this image because we are movie-watchers? When we imagine Frankenstein's monster, do we draw upon Mary Shelley's description? Or Boris Karloff's iconic look from the 1931 film by James Whale? Whether as cliche or icon, the monster clearly not only escaped from Victor Frankenstein's laboratory, but also from the pages of Shelley's book to roam unimpeded through our cultural psyche. New in the acclaimed Bedside, Bathtub & Armchair series, this guide provides the interested and curious, the serious and the ghoulish, with a new and unimaginable understanding of the Frankenstein legend. Written by an acclaimed social critic, The Bedside, Bathtub & Armchair Companion to Frankenstein takes us from Mary Shelley's creation to the latest film adaptations and comic-book re-creations. The book includes 200 images, many seldom seen, along with maps, puzzles, and brain-teashers--whether your brain was misplaced in a scientist's lab or not!

The Bedside Dickens provides a lively look at this great novelist's life and career. It sheds light on his role as a polemicist and journalist and explores the way his work was long informed by his Christian faith. It also reveals his most persistent literary themes and provides a vivid sense of how, among his contemporaries, Dickens' vast success-and his "radical" politics-provoked both admiration and scorn. Dickens, this study reminds us, saw life as a battle, but as both a novelist and journalist he sought to provide a more hopeful worldview. He repeatedly satirized vice and folly, even as he urged his readers and the leaders of his day to be less selfish and narrow and to "do good always." Chapters and topics include: Dickens and Animals; Christmas Stories; The Magnetizer; Dickens vs. Thackeray; A Christian Writer; Dickens Down Under; What Dickens Read; Dickens and Spontaneous Combustion; Dickens and Journalism; Dickens on the Couch.

A bolt-necked monster opens his eyes, lifts himself from his laboratory table, then lurches and stumbles toward his creator. Do we know this image because we are movie-watchers? When we imagine Frankenstein's monster, do we draw upon Mary Shelley's description? Or Boris Karloff's iconic look from the 1931 film by James Whale? Whether as cliche or icon, the monster clearly not only escaped from Victor Frankenstein's laboratory, but also from the pages of Shelley's book to roam unimpeded through our cultural psyche. New in the acclaimed Bedside, Bathtub & Armchair series, this guide provides the interested and curious, the serious and the ghoulish, with a new and unimaginable understanding of the Frankenstein legend. Written by an acclaimed social critic, The Bedside, Bathtub & Armchair Companion to Frankenstein takes us from Mary Shelley's creation to the latest film adaptations and comic-book re-creations. The book includes 200 images, many seldom seen, along with maps, puzzles, and brain-teashers--whether your brain was misplaced in a scientist's lab or not!

Looking at all aspects of the Dracula phenomenon, this book includes entries on the psychological and sociological implications of Stoker's book and the stage plays, movies, television versions, actors, and, of course, the historical Dracula, Vlad the Impaler.

Mary Shelley's timeless gothic novel presents the epic battle between man and monster at its greatest literary pitch. In trying to create life, the young student Victor Frankenstein unleashes forces beyond his control, setting into motion a long and tragic chain of events that brings Victor to the very brink of madness. How he tries to destroy his creation, as it destroys everything Victor loves, is a powerful story of love, friendship, scientific hubris, and horror. Enriched eBook Features Editor Charles E. Robinson provides the following specially commissioned features for this Enriched eBook Classic: * How to Read Frankenstein * Appendix IV: From Plato’s Symposium * Frankenstein Chronology * Nineteenth-Century Reviews of Frankenstein * Frankenstein Filmography * Suggested Further Reading * Illustrations: Mary Shelley, Her Circle, Her Environs, and Images of Frankenstein (1831-1910) * Enriched eBook Notes The enriched eBook format invites readers to go beyond the pages of these beloved works and gain more insight into the life and times of an author and the period in which the book was originally written for a rich reading experience.

For the bicentennial of its first publication, Mary Shelley’s original 1818 text, introduced by National Book Critics Circle award-winner Charlotte Gordon. Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read 2018 marks the bicentennial of Mary Shelley’s seminal novel. For the first time, Penguin Classics will publish the original 1818 text, which preserves the hard-hitting and politically-charged aspects of Shelley’s original writing, as well as her unflinching wit and strong female voice. This edition also emphasizes Shelley’s relationship with her mother—trailblazing feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, who penned A Vindication of the Rights of Woman—and demonstrates her commitment to carrying forward her mother’s ideals, placing her in the context of a feminist legacy rather than the sole female in the company of male poets, including Percy Shelley and Lord Byron. This edition includes a new introduction and suggestions for further reading by National Book Critics Circle award-winner and Shelley expert Charlotte Gordon, literary excerpts and reviews selected by Gordon, and a chronology and essay by preeminent Shelley scholar Charles E. Robinson. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,800 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel Frankenstein is its own type of monster mythos that will not die, a corpus whose parts keep getting harvested to animate new artistic creations. What makes this tale so adaptable and so resilient that, nearly 200 years later, it remains vitally relevant in a culture radically different from the one that spawned its birth? Monstrous Progeny takes readers on a fascinating exploration of the Frankenstein family tree, tracing the literary and intellectual roots of Shelley’s novel from the sixteenth century and analyzing the evolution of the book’s figures and themes into modern productions that range from children’s cartoons to pornography. Along the way, media scholar Lester D. Friedman and historian Allison B. Kavey examine the adaptation and evolution of Victor Frankenstein and his monster across different genres and in different eras. In doing so, they demonstrate how Shelley’s tale and its characters continue to provide crucial reference points for current debates about bioethics, artificial intelligence, cyborg lifeforms, and the limits of scientific progress. Blending an extensive historical overview with a detailed analysis of key texts, the authors reveal how the Frankenstein legacy arose from a series of fluid intellectual contexts and continues to pulsate through an extraordinary body of media products. Both thought-provoking and entertaining, Monstrous Progeny offers a lively look at an undying and significant cultural phenomenon.