Celebrating Dundee’s links to Frankenstein
● New edition of Shelley’s novel to be given to local school pupils
A new Dundee edition of Frankenstein celebrating author Mary Shelley’s links to the city is to be published and distributed free to local schoolchildren later this year.
The move coincides with the 200th anniversary of the classic Gothic novel’s publication. The book will include the complete 1818 text of the groundbreaking novel, as well as dozens of commissioned images produced by award-winning local comics artists.
Shelley spent two years living in Dundee’s South Baffin Street as a teenager after her father, William Godwin, sent her to live with the Baxter family, whose wealth came from the jute industry. The Baxters’ home, “The Cottage” in Ferry Road, was mentioned in the text of Frankenstein.
This period in her life would profoundly influence Shelley, as she later acknowledged: “It was beneath the trees of the grounds belonging to our house, or on the bleak sides of the woodless mountains near, that my true compositions, the airy flights of my imagination, were born and fostered.”
The tale of the young scientist Victor Frankenstein who creates a monster was published anonymously on 1 January, 1818 when Shelley was aged 18. Her name appeared on the second edition.
Dr Daniel Cook, of the University of Dundee’s English department, who is editing the book, said: “Frankenstein is one of the most influential novels ever written.
“It is studied in schools and universities across the English-speaking world, and everyone is in some way familiar with the story of the god-like scientist and his monstrous creation, through movies, caricatures or popular culture more generally.
“We are very excited to build on the existing scholarship around Mary Shelley’s time here and to bring out this special edition. By circulating free copies in print and online we hope even more people will be inspired by the novel, and connect it more firmly with the place where it all began for the young Shelley: Dundee in 1812.”
Broadcaster Billy Kay, currently working on a BBC Scotland radio documentary exploring Shelley’s Dundee, is writing the foreword.
The new edition of Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus will be released online in a downloadable format while thousands of copies will be printed and given to schoolchildren in Dundee and surrounding areas.
The project is funded by Dundee University’s Art and Humanities Research Institute (AHRI) as part of the institution’s ongoing involvement with the national Being Human Festival of the Humanities.
In addition to producing a full-length comic book entitled Frankenstein Begins, the team have showcased their work nationally and internationally. A sequel to the comic, Frankenstein Returns, will also be launched.
Dundee – already dubbed “Scotland’s coolest city” and one of the best places in the world to visit this year – just got even cooler.
For local school children are to be given a free, special Dundee edition of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, described as “one of the most influential novels ever written”.
Many people may be unaware of Dundee’s connection to the London-born writer. But, according to Shelley herself, it was “beneath the trees of the grounds belonging to our house” in the city’s South Baffin Street or “on the bleak sides of the woodless mountains” nearby that the “airy flights of my imagination were born and fostered”.
The story she produced from that prodigious imagination and the novel as a work of literature have stood the test of time for two centuries and our fascination with Victor Frankenstein and his “monster” looks set to continue for centuries to come. Dundee’s landscape may have changed considerably, but perhaps children there can take inspiration from the new edition of Frankenstein, an immortal story created by someone not much older than they are now.