Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft

Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus. Revised, Corrected, and Illustrated with a New Introduction by the Author. London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, 1831



Bound with:



Charles Brockden Brown. Edgar Huntly; or The Sleep Walker, London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bently, 1831



2 works in one volume, 8vo (6¼ x 4 in.; 159 x 102 mm). Engraved frontispiece and title-page vignette in Frankenstein by T. Von Holst; lacks final blank in vol. I, paper adhesion on II:B3r costing one word on A8v.  Nineteenth-century full polished calf, central frame tooled in blind, gilt foliate border, the spine gilt in 5 compartments (2 reserved for red and green morocco lettering pieces), marbled endpapers and edges; minor rubbing at spine ends. Quarter brown morocco folding case.  

"P" (stamped initial on title-page)

Sadleir 3734a; Wolff 6280a

First illustrated edition and third edition overall of Frankenstein, from "Bentley's Standard Novels Series" (Vol. IX, first series), with Brown's novel being Vol. X. In her introduction, Mary Shelley states that the alterations she has made to the novel are "principally those of style. I have changed no portion of the story, nor introduced any new ideas or circumstances. I have mended the language where it was so bald as to interfere with the interest of the narrative; and these changes occur almost exclusively in the beginning of the first volume [the 1818 first edition was issued in three volumes]. Throughout they are entirely confined to such parts as mere adjuncts to the story, leaving the core and substance of it untouched" (p. xii).