3. Frankenstein

‘Frankenstein’ describes Mary Shelley’s desire to write her own stories and follow in the footsteps of her parents, and other Gothic writers. Mary Shelley stayed in Geneva, with Percy, her stepsister, Claire Clairmont, and her illegitimate child during ‘the year without a summer’. Here she met other Romantic writers, including Lord Byron and John Polidori, author of The Vampyre. Critics were scandalized, calling the group ‘the league of incest’. That summer, she accepted Lord Byron’s challenge to write a horror story during a stormy night at the Villa Diodati. She invented the character Victor Frankenstein, who was obsessed with mastering the creation of life at the expense of those he loved. Not only is the story famous for being an early example of science fiction, it is also a scathing critique of patriarchy, racism, and the slave trade.