3/17/2023 0 Comments Frankenstein authorI saw – with shut eyes, but acute mental vision – I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. For her part, Mary came up with an eerier and much more imaginative premise: what if a scientist were to assemble a human life form from lifeless body parts? As she later described it: Neither he nor Percy produced much of substance, but drawing on ancient legends about the undead John Polidori wrote a tale that he later published as The Vampyre, which partly inspired Bram Stoker’s much more famous Victorian novel Dracula (1897). It was during one of these freakishly long summer evenings that Byron suggested they have a competition to tell ghost stories. Owing to the lingering effects of a huge volcanic eruption in Indonesia, 1816 became known as ‘the year without a summer’, and the party at the Villa Diodati in Geneva were often stuck indoors, forced to light candles because of the gloom and stormy weather outside. After returning briefly to England, where Mary gave birth to a daughter who died in infancy and then a son, William, who survived, the pair went travelling again in May 1816, arriving in Geneva. She later turned her diary from this period into History of a Six Weeks’ Tour of France, Switzerland and Germany (1817), and kept journals until almost the end of her life. They eloped to mainland Europe in 1813 with almost no money, and embarked on a life together that was ‘very political as well as poetical’, as Mary later described it. Godwin himself taught Mary at home, ensuring that her education was top-notch – highly unusual for a woman at this time.Īlways independent minded (her father once described her as ‘singularly bold, somewhat imperious, and active of mind’), Mary met Percy Bysshe Shelley in November 1812 at the age of 15, and, despite the fact that Shelley was already married, the two fell in love. The family were often poor, but their circle of friends included such figures as the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the writers Charles and Mary Lamb. The young Mary grew up in a household that can only be described as unconventional: her father William was an anarchist philosopher who had an illegitimate daughter from another marriage, and when he remarried in 1801 another two children joined the household. Those readers who like a bit of a monster-twist to a familiar story may find this parody hilarious.Born in London in 1797, Mary Godwin was named for her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft – a sad memorial, given that her mother died just 11 days after her birth. The illustration on the book's cover may look oddly familiar to Madeline and readers may notice the word play with the author's name, Ludworst Bemonster, which is used as the pen name for the book. “In this parody, Walton and Hale twist and retell Bemelman's classic story Madeline by using Frankenstein as their main character. It's the latest in a growing crypt of hilariously wicked kids books that includes Michael Rex's Goodnight Goon and Judy Sierra's The House That Drac Built…Striking devilish balance between the original and the transformed version is what makes this book-and all good parodies-so enchanting.” - The Washington Post “Anyone who loves Ludwig Bemelmans's classic will be howling at the moon over this witty mash-up. “Children.will gobble this one up.” - School Library Journal “Fans of the original.will enjoy spotting the parallels in this creepy-cute Halloween substitute.” - Publishers Weekly “The illustrations have traded sunny yellow for pumpkin orange backgrounds and make comically sly allusions to the original title.” - Kirkus Reviews “Walton twists the classic rhymes of the original with glee ('In two crooked lines, they bonked their heads / pulled out their teeth / and wet their beds') while Hale reenacts each scene with devilish mayhem.” - Booklist
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