Mary Shelley (1797-1851) was a famous novelist whose best-known work is Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818), although she published other books including The Last Man (1826) and Lodore (1835) (“Mary Shelley”). Frankenstein interestingly opens and closes in the epistolary format just like the novel Barford Abbey, although the main bulk of the novel is written in narrative form (“Frankenstein, An Introduction To”). The protagonist of the novel, Victor Frankenstein, creates a creature from the parts of corpses but quickly abandons it out of fear once the creature is brought to life. The creature faces constant rejection from society and eventually goes after Frankenstein for bringing him alone into a cold world. This novel is extremely important as it was one of the first novels to merge the gothic and romantic genres (Sundaram). The combination of the horror imagery with the romantic emphasis on emotions caused Frankenstein to become a classic which is still widely taught in many classrooms across America today.

“Frankenstein, An Introduction To.” Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism, vol. 170, 2006. 

“Mary Shelley.” Biography.com, A&E Networks Television, 28 Feb. 2020, www.biography.com/writer/mary-shelley. 

Sundaram, Mark, director. Sublime: The Aesthetics & Origins of Romanticism. YouTube, YouTube, 2 Feb. 2016, www.youtube.com/watch?v=au-z2jVaTNk&feature=youtu.be.