The Man Who Wrote Frankenstein

The Man Who Wrote Frankenstein
Author John Lauritsen
Country United States
Language English
Genre Literary criticism
Published 2007 (Pagan Press)
Media type Print
Pages 229
ISBN 978-0-943742-14-4 (paperback)
978-0-943742-15-1 (library)

The Man Who Wrote Frankenstein is a 2007 book about poet Percy Bysshe Shelley by John Lauritsen.

Summary

Lauritsen argues that Percy Bysshe Shelley, not his wife Mary Shelley, was the real author of Frankenstein (1818), that the book "has consistently been underrated and misinterpreted", and that its dominant theme is "male love".[1]

Scholarly reception

Lauritsen's book received a favorable review from literary scholar Camille Paglia, who wrote that "Lauritsen assembles an overwhelming case that Mary Shelley, as a badly educated teenager, could not possibly have written the soaring prose of "Frankenstein"...and that the so-called manuscript in her hand is simply one example of the clerical work she did for many writers as a copyist." Paglia compared Lauritsen's work to that of Leslie Fiedler.[2]

Feminist Germaine Greer dismissed Lauritsen's thesis, writing that while he argues that Mary Shelley was not well educated enough to have written it, Frankenstein is not "a good, let alone a great" novel and that it does not deserve the attention it has been given.[3] Lauritsen countered that Frankenstein "is a radical and disturbing work, containing some of the most beautiful prose in the English language.... a profound and moving masterpiece, fully worthy of its author, Percy Bysshe Shelley."[4]

See also

References

Footnotes

Bibliography

Books
  • Lauritsen, John (2007). The Man Who Wrote Frankenstein. New York: Pagan Press. ISBN 978-0-943742-14-4.
Online articles