According to the Shelley-Godwin archive, Mary Shelley conceived of her famous novel, Frankenstein, during a summer stay in Geneva that sounds like the summers we know in San Francisco: cold.
A year and a half later, in January of 1818, Shelley anonymously published the novel, and the rest is history — a rich history, of Frankenstein scholarship and artistic interpretations including books, films, and recently even a ballet, proving that Shelley’s masterpiece is as relevant as ever to audiences today.
FrankenFest: A Campus-Wide Celebration of the 200th Anniversary of the novel — organized by USF’s English Department — begins this week with the opening of a Student/Faculty curated exhibit “On the Bicentenary of Frankenstein: Mary Shelley and her Contemporaries” in the Donohue Rare Book Room of Gleeson Library | Geschke Learning Resource Center.
This opening will be immediately followed by a Science and Social Science Faculty Panel (Dissecting the Modern Man) at 5 pm in the Berman Room in Fromm, as well as several other events over the next two weeks.
I’m particularly excited about Franken-Reads, a campus-wide reading of the ENTIRE novel on Oct. 31st in the K-Hall Amphitheater starting at 9am. We’ll be in good company; the Library of Congress is also reading the novel aloud on Halloween (and live-streaming it!).
“On the Bicentenary of Frankenstein: Mary Shelley and her Contemporaries” will run in the Rare Book Room through December 14th. For more information about the exhibit, visit: usfcafrankenstein.wordpress.com. Gleeson has also pulled out our print copy of Mary Shelley’s letters, some books about her life, and other material related to the 200th anniversary of the novel — you can find that display on the first floor.