4:30 p.m., Oct. 21, 2008----The month that marks the real beginning of the fall season and ends with the popular feast of All Hallows Eve, or Halloween, also is proving to be a busy time for Charles Robinson, UD professor of English.

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For starters, there is the publication this month of The Original Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley with Percy Shelley, of which Robinson is the editor and author of the introduction of the work published by Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford.

Robinson also served as editor and enhancer for the Penguin Classics Maurice Hindle e-book version of Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, available from Penguin Classics in October.

To launch the publication of The Original Frankenstein, Robinson delivered a lecture in the presence of the original Frankenstein manuscripts at the New Bodleian Library on Oct 7. Events at the Bodleian also included a lecture by noted science fiction writer Brian Aldiss, author of Frankenstein Unbound.

“Two years ago I was asked to do a draft, which led to an invitation to edit the Frankenstein notebooks,” Robinson said. “This led to The Original Frankenstein, which contains the version edited and amended by Mary's husband, the poet Percy Shelley, and a second version in which nearly as many as possible of the changes made by Percy were removed.”

In his introduction to The Original Frankenstein, Robinson said that, “a comparison of the two versions...shows that Percy deleted many words...and that he contributed at least 4,000 to 5,000 words to this 72,000-word novel.”

Despite this significant contribution, Robinson noted that the manuscript evidence in the surviving pages of the draft and fair copy-- clean copy of the corrected manuscript--attest to the fact that the novel was conceived and mainly written by Mary Shelley

Robinson said it was important to be able to examine the manuscript and fair copy documents to obtain a more accurate critical perspective on the novel that was first drafted during the summer of 1816 in Geneva. Three principal versions of the novel were published in 1818, 1823 and 1831, the later being the one reprinted for the remainder of the 19th and most of the 20th centuries.

“Knowing that errors will creep in, editors have to be painstakingly accurate,” Robinson said. “You are trying to present the best text for the general reader as for the specialists. Getting this right is the editor's responsibility.”

The enduring popularity of Mary Shelley's monster, Robinson said, results from the quality of the book and the effects of Hollywood on the popular imagination.

“The novel subsumes the basic Western myths about the consequences of the pursuit of knowledge,” Robinson said. “It's a short novel, and states the murder as fact, and with its simplicity and clarity, there is a fable-like quality to the narrative. It's also about cautionary science, revolutionary theories, family dynamics and responsibility to one's children.”

Working on the manuscripts and lecturing in the Bodleian is all the more meaningful, Robinson said, because Mary and Percy Shelley apparently visited the same Clarendon Building in 1815 during their excursion, and moreover, even Victor Frankenstein and Henry Clerval visited the same building in the novel.

“By inspecting each leaf of the manuscript, and by attending to torn edges and glue residue, ink blots, pin holes, water marks and other minutiae, [Dr. Bruce C.] Barker-Benfield [senior assistant librarian at the Department of Special Collections and Western Manuscripts at the Bodleian Library] and I reconstructed the disbound pages of Mary Shelley's notebooks and discovered the process by which she created her novel,” Robinson said. “Here, in the Clarendon Building, the library became a laboratory, and the 'hideous progeny' of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein once again came to life.”

For the Frankenstein e-book to be published by Penguin Classics on Halloween, Robinson contributed 100 pages of enhancements, including a filmography and paragraphs about movies ranging from the 13-minute 1910 silent black-and-white version directed by J. Searle Dawley for Thomas Edison, to the 2004 American color film Frankenstein directed by Kevin Connor. Robinson's contributions to the e-book also include new footnotes, illustrations of Mary Shelley, her circle, environs, images of the monster and an appendix that includes Plato's Symposium.

Besides working on two new versions of Frankenstein, Robinson has contributed to two other books published this year.

Robinson coedited, with Bernard Beatty and Anthony Howe, Liberty and the Poetic Licence: New Essays on Byron, which was released in September by the University of Liverpool Press, The book explores both the prose and poetry of George Gordon, Lord Byron, from his earliest works to those of his fullest development.

Robinson also contributed the foreword to Byron: Heritage and Legacy, edited by UD alum Cheryl A. Wilson, with Bernard Beatty. Published by Palgrave/Macmillian, the book features essays Robinson selected for the 2001 Byron Conference, a three-city, 10-day event that concluded with four days of scholarly presentations at UD.

“For the last two years I have been extraordinarily busy,” Robinson said. “All of this would not have been possible without a full year's sabbatical from the University.”

The Original Frankenstein, not yet available in the USA, may be ordered online from [www.bodleianbookshop.co.uk].

Article by Jerry Rhodes