Modern film treatments of ‘Frankenstein’ – don’t forget that Frankenstein is the scientist and not his ‘Creature’ – have tended to concentrate so much on the elements of the gothic, horror and suspense, that it is easy to forget (if we ever knew) that the original novel behind the franchise is arguably the protype for the science-fiction genre. It’s also an extraordinary tale that weaves together vast ethical themes related to the artificial creation of life with a young woman’s understanding of an emerging frontier of scientific thought. Sharon Ruston’s ‘The Science of Life and Death in Frankenstein’ (Bodleian Library, £25, ISBN 9781851245574) is a superb examination of the confluence of early-19th-century objective discovery and the subjective Romantic imagination.
Mary Shelley’s novel was published two centuries ago, at a time when developments in science and medicine were coming thick and fast. Its central idea – that a living being could be artificially...