this was an amazing book i thoroughly enjoyed it and i recommend it for everyone that enjoys horror things.

Making the Monster: The Science Behind Mary Shelley's Frankenstein by Kathryn Harkup is an exploration of the history, science, and politics that played a role in the creation of this piece of classic literature. The year 1818 saw the publication of one of the most influential science-fiction stories of all time. Frankenstein: Or, Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley had a huge impact on gothic horror and science fiction genres. The period of 1790–1820 saw huge advances in our understanding of electricity and physiology. Sensational science demonstrations caught the imagination of the general public, and newspapers were full of tales of murderers and resurrectionists.

It is unlikely that Frankenstein would have been successful in his attempts to create life back in 1818. However, advances in medical science mean we have overcome many of the stumbling blocks that would have thwarted his ambition. We can resuscitate people using defibrillators, save lives using blood transfusions, and prolong life through organ transplants--these procedures are nowadays considered almost routine. Many of these modern achievements are a direct result of 19th century scientists conducting their gruesome experiments on the dead.
Making the Monster is a book that initially intrigued me, and that I learned a great deal from. I am a literary nerd, and thought I knew a good deal about Mary Shelley and those around her. I was glad to increase that knowledge base and to put in context with the political and social conflicts of the time. I also liked getting a better understanding of the scientific advancements and the way research was performed and thought about in her day. I will admit that after reading about half the information of the scientific evaluations and advancements my mind started to wander and I had a hard time focusing. I really wanted more understanding of how some of the scientific mindset grew and changed over the years, and who made which set of advancements, but I had a hard time getting through the middle portion of the book that dealt with this. I was much more engaged in the facts about Shelley's personal life. I liked the inclusion of the occasional image to support or enhance the text, and think they were used well.

Making the Monster is an informative read. I felt like my engagement level varied throughout the book, which might not be the case for everyone. I learned a great deal, and I think it might be fascinating for some and dry for others depending on their interests and learning styles.

This book was so much more than I was expecting. Part history, part literary theory, part science, and all of it written in a really compelling and readable way. I read this as part of a Frankenstein Project on my YouTube channel where I read Frankenstein, Frankenstein in Baghdad, and Making the Monster and this was such a great companion to the other two titles. I was expecting more of a straight history on the writing of Frankenstein, but as someone who loves history, I was over the moon at how much detail was included here that provided excellent historical context to better understand how and why Shelley wrote the book she did. Frankenstein continues to hold up as a fascinating work that's relevant to us still today, and Making the Monster provides great insight into the classic.

From the Wall Street Journal, June 2, 2018:


The Founding Myth of the Scientific Age

Like its 8-foot creature, Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” has had long legs since its publication 200 years ago. She deemed it a mere “ghost story,” but it has since been rebranded as the first science-fiction novel and even “the first modern myth,” according to the foreword of “The New Annotated Frankenstein” (Liveright, 352 pages, $35), edited by Leslie S. Klinger. That laurel, I would argue, belongs to Goethe’s 1808 “Faust, Part One,” but in this volume’s afterword, Anne K. Mellor makes a more defensible claim: that Frankenstein is “the myth of modern science,” illustrating how humanity’s attempts to harness nature can have unintended and horrific consequences.

Indeed, the novel is more relevant than ever, given the scientific advances in biotechnology and artificial intelligence that make Victor Frankenstein’s aim of creating a new species more than conceivable. “Frankenfoods” made from genetically modified organisms are just shelves away from Franken Berry cereal. Both are signs of how universal Shelley’s myth has become.

There are manifold editions of the novel, more than 90 films with “Frankenstein” in the title, and innumerable Frankenstein tchotchkes to warm the heart and freeze the blood of children and adults alike. Partly a fable about the Industrial Revolution, “Frankenstein” itself has become a scholarly and commercial industry, and a host of electrifying new works has been issued to celebrate the bicentenary of its publication. Mr. Klinger’s volume is a wonderfully capacious introduction to the 1818 edition and its historical, literary and biographical contexts: As his annotations demonstrate, Shelley undercut this version’s starkly existentialist themes when she revised it in 1831. And subsequent interpreters would emphasize other aspects of her creation.

Christopher Frayling’s “Frankenstein: The First Two Hundred Years” (Reel Art Press, 208 pages, $39.95) is especially strong in its “visual celebration” of the iconography of Shelley’s creation. Half of the book’s glossy pages are devoted to evocative images, some published here for the first time. They illuminate the unusual byways the work has traveled in its mass-media incarnations. We see, for example, that Elsa Lanchester’s unforgettably bizarre hairstyle in “The Bride of Frankenstein” (1935) was inspired by the ancient Egyptian bust of Nefertiti, displayed prominently in Berlin during the 1920s. Mr. Frayling’s detailed cultural history of “Frankenstein,” which comprises the book’s other half, is no less illustrative of “a creation myth which works for today.”

Those seeking to delve further will find intelligent essays on the novel’s origins, appropriations and scientific relevance in “Frankenstein: How a Monster Became an Icon,” edited by physicist Sidney Perkowitz and filmmaker Eddy von Mueller (Pegasus, 239 pages, $28.95). Bringing together the “two cultures” of art and science just as Shelley did in her novel, this collection also provides insights into this modern myth by those who have contributed to its expansion, such as John Logan, creator of the brilliant “Penny Dreadful” TV series. Kathryn Harkup’s “Making the Monster: The Science Behind Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein” (Bloomsbury, 304 pages, $27) lucidly illuminates Shelley’s investment in the rapidly expanding knowledge of chemistry, biology and electricity of her times, and reminds us of how “Frankenstein” helped inspire technological developments, such as the pacemaker.

The last words should be left to Nick Groom, whose introduction to “Frankenstein or ‘The Modern Prometheus’: The 1818 Text” (Oxford, 226 pages, $22.95) encapsulates the work’s many interpretations. He sees “Frankenstein” as, among other things, “a creation myth about the origin of stories.” This is precisely what modern myths do: open the world to new questions, rather than establish answers. They are truly generative, an apt term for a novel that queries a selfish inventor, his damaged creature and science’s threat to arrogate creation to itself.

—Mr. Saler is the author of “As If: Modern Enchantment and the Literary Prehistory of Virtual Reality.”

Two hundred years ago, a young woman — barely more than a teenager — wrote a daring novel that questioned the limits of science and discovery, and challenged notions of agency, self, family and moral obligation. Her character created a monster, but she fabricated something much more complicated.

The modern ideas around Frankenstein have been polluted by the early screen versions — a mistake repeated through to contemporary adaptations. While there is some amazing visual spectacle in those horror films, they miss the complex questions posed by Shelley and her groundbreaking book.

Kathryn Harkup, author of A is for Arsenic, applies a similar process in her previous book to the creation of Victor Frankenstein’s creature. She explores the history of medicine and surgery at that point, the experiments being done with electricity, and galvanism, the exploration of uncharted Arctic territory, and the collision of Enlightenment ideas with Romantic sensibilities.

Artwork by Bernie Wrightson.

Harkup is a chemist, by training, but found her stride in talking about the “quirky side” of science. She is limber in her ability to present sound, scientific arguments then bring the reasoning to a lay audience.

However, the idea you may have in your head of an hysterical, obsessive scientist with evil ambitions is very different from the character Mary Shelley created in 1816. The figure she depicted was certainly focused, perhaps even obsessive, about his scientific endeavours, but she did not portray Victor Frankenstein as mad. … Nor is Frankenstein a very good example of science gone wrong. Victor’s experiment in bringing life to an inanimate corpse was a complete success. It was his inability to foresee the potential consequences of his actions that brought about his downfall. ~ Pg. XX

Harkup also weaves in the biographical details that likely affected Mary Shelley and the writing of the book. She traces Mary’s childhood (and even a bit about her radical parents), the strange early courtship of her and Percy Shelley (no matter how many time I read about it, I can’t keep it straight — Byron, Polidori, Clair Clairmont, Fanny Imlay, Harriet Westbrook), and the influences of her acquaintances’ own interests. Shelley had a serious interest in alchemy dating back to his college days. John William Polidori was a medical doctor who liked to discuss the source of the “spark of life.” Indeed, he doesn’t seem to be a very good physician at all and is known today for his early vampiric novel and his connection to Byron, not his advances to medicine.


Discovery of the Leyden jar in Musschenbroek’s lab
Mary Shelley acknowledges her reading of Erasmus Darwin (grandfather of Charles), the Romantic poets like Coleridge, advances in surgical practices, tissue grafts and the storage of electrical charges, and the macabre tales of resurrectionists. Harkup also notes some of the differences in the 1818 version, published anonymously, and the 1831 reprint, which included an introduction from the now known Mary Shelley. She even traces the route of the band of travellers as they traipsed across middle Europe during the Year without a Summer, and finds clues as to Mary Shelley’s possible naming inspirations.

Harkup has done not only some fabulous research, she has presented it in a fascinating and well structured way. While it might make the most sense to have read Frankenstein before, it isn’t necessary to enjoy the strange world of early medicine and modern science and how it met the tradition of storytelling to create a new type of literature.

One of my favorites of the year. When I saw another book by Harkup I immediately requested it, as A is for Arsenic made it to my top reads of 2016.
The title is a little misleading as it goes quite a bit in-depth into Shelley's life, as well at a look starting from the Enlightenment era to the beginnings of alchemy and chemistry. The bulk of the book is, of course, the inspiration behind the classic novel of Frankenstein.
I found this to be a very interesting read and thought that Harkup did a great job at making this interesting and easily understandable.

I would like to thank Kathryn Harkup and Bloomsbury USA for granting me the opportunity to read and review this wonderful book.

THIS WAS SO INTERESTING. First of all I had no idea that Mary Shelley's life was so delightfully insane. Secondly, reading about the science and potential influences behind the groundbreaking novel were endlessly interesting. I've been reading a lot of medical science/history books lately and it was nice to be able to fit in little things I've learned and also fill some gaps in my knowledge. This book was so well researched and written. Not only was it about Mary Shelley and her life, but the things and people she could have interacted with and how they came to shape Frankenstein. I also learned a lot about the novel itself. I have yet to actually read Frankenstein, but it was so interesting to learn that much of the influences and ideas we have about the novel were fabricated after. Go pick this one up. It was a complete delight!

Whether or not you’ve read or liked Frankenstein, this is an extremely interesting book about Mary Shelley, her life, and the science of her time. I enjoyed the detail Harkup went into and how she was able to make it so informative while keeping it interesting.

I own Harkup’s other novel (A is for Arsenic: The Poisons of Agatha Christie) and it will be moving up on my tbr after reading this.

2018 marks the 200th anniversary of the publication of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. 1818 was a time of enormous social and political change, and scientists were constantly making new discoveries. Kathryn Harkup, in Making the Monster, explores much of the scientific knowledge that could have informed Shelley’s depiction of her Monster and mad scientist.

Based on the title alone, I expected this to be a bit of a different book. While science takes up a significant amount of the book’s focus, it’s far from the only focus, where Harkup explores diverse topics from the Illuminati, to the biographies of Mary Shelley’s husband and father, to the history skin grafting. The book also doesn’t focus exclusively on scientific understandings of the early 19th century, but sometimes looks at contemporary science as well. Modern transplantation, for example, didn’t influence Frankenstein – particularly because Victor wasn’t performing transplants – but it’s interesting to see how we can still feel some echoes of this landmark novel in modern science.

Harkup favours familiar language over scientific jargon, so the book moves along at a quick clip. In fact, it might be too quick; while a few significant figures, like Luigi Galvani (whose work may have inspired Victor Frankenstein’s interest in electricity) get a number of pages for a thorough examination, much of the book flits from one topic to the next in a matter of a few paragraphs. This brief summary of many topics will certainly provide a reader with some new and interesting trivia, the information might be easier to retain when explored on a deeper level.

That said, much of the trivia is interesting. I really enjoyed the morbid history of the “Collection” chapter, which focused on the issues of grave robbing and laws limiting the dissection of corpses, both of which were problems plaguing 19th century scientists and medical students. I also appreciated the breadth of research, and anyone who picks up the book is likely to learn something new; if you’re familiar with scientific history, the literary biography sections may provide some new insights, or vice-versa.

With such an ambitious breadth of information to cover, there is inevitably some confusion arising from the book’s organization. Luigi Galvani is mentioned a few times before he’s formally introduced, and there are two separate chapters on electricity, even though electricity isn’t expressly used to bring the Monster to life in the novel. Additionally, Harkup doesn’t explore the plot of Frankenstein until the final chapters of the book, which can sometimes get bogged down by the plot summary.

More than once, Shelley is criticized for being "frustratingly vague" concerning how exactly the Creature is brought to life. To me, this seems like criticizing the novel for something it’s not trying to do. While science is undoubtedly a significant part of Shelley’s novel, it’s mostly confined to the beginning, the rest concerning the fallout from Victor’s decision to abandon his Creature, and his responsibility to (and for) the Monster he’s created. Some evocation of modern science lent it an air of plausibility, but it was never meant to be a factual account of real science.

Furthermore, while the book mostly avoids a humourless, Neil-DeGrasse-Tyson-on-Twitter take on the book, Harkup does point out reasons that the story would be impossible. While it’s certainly interesting to know what kinds of challenges doctors in Victor’s time would have had to deal with, I was less charmed by the nitpicking of an early science fiction novel’s realism, particularly from the perspective of modern scientific understanding. It feels a bit humourless to point out, for example, that the Creature would not have survived more than a few days due to a severely compromised immune system.

Tying together all of these disparate threads – science, political history, literary biography, etc. – is a comprehensive timeline at the end of the book. It demonstrates how much change and rapid development was occurring as Shelley was writing (and later editing) the novel, and Harkup demonstrates how much of that development, particularly in the field of science, is present in Shelley’s text. The book never feels boring, since it’s rapidly moving from one idea to the next, and I enjoyed reading it, even as I questioned what its central thesis or conclusion was meant to be.

Verdict:
Borrow it. If you’re interested in Frankenstein or the history of science, particularly in the 18th and 19th century, Making the Monster will definitely have some nuggets of interest for you. The breadth of topics means that everyone stands to learn from it, but also limits its usefulness as a reference text after you’ve read it once – if you want a comprehensive exploration of any of these topics, look elsewhere. But if you want a quick read that might help you appreciate the way that science informed Frankenstein and how Frankenstein can be felt in later scientific discoveries, this one’s worth checking out from the library.

Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus” was published in 1818. In the two centuries since, it has taken its place as one of the most iconic works of science fiction and gothic horror in the history of Western literature. It has become a cultural touchstone, a familiar landmark for anyone navigating the realm of popular culture. When you say “Frankenstein,” everyone knows to what you’re referring.

But while the novel is a work of pure invention, it came about in a world where many of the ideas it put forth were viewed as plausible. The environment in which Shelley lived at that time was an ideal breeding ground to give birth to such a tale.

“Making the Monster: The Science Behind Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein” (Bloomsbury Sigma, $27) is author and scientist Kathryn Harkup’s effort to give a sense of perspective on the world into which Shelley’s iconic tale was brought, to shine a light on the scientific conventions and societal mores that served as the foundation upon which the classic story was built.

Those with more than a passing familiarity with Shelley and her tale might know about the circumstances behind its origins, the challenge issued by the poet Lord Byron to himself, Mary and her husband Percy Bysshe Shelley while all were at Villa Diodati in Switzerland – that all three should create a “ghost story.” That challenge served as the impetus for what would become “Frankenstein.”

Harkup takes great pains to illustrate the kind of world in which Shelley lived at the time. This was a period of great discovery and scientific experimentation, a time when the idea of science was beginning to transcend the dabblers and dilettantes of the idle rich. While natural philosophy was still entwined with notions of alchemy and the like, there were still people making great scientific strides.

A fascination with the power and potential of electricity permeated society at the beginning of the 19th century. Galvanism was all the rage and voltaic piles – batteries – were being invented and improved. And of course, the notion that electricity could be used to induce activity and motion in the muscles of the dead had proven a popular topic of exploration and experimentation.

Alongside that look at the scientific climate, we get a breakdown of Shelley’s personal history. Her unconventional upbringing and education, her odd relationship with her (eventual) husband and the artistic eccentricity of their social circle – all of it laid before us in biographical notes that, while never breaking new ground, provide an engaging context.

“Making the Monster” isn’t looking to do any kind of deep dive into either the science or the society of the time. What Harkup has done instead is create a broad and engaging work that will be accessible to the layman with little or no prior knowledge of the subject matter while also proving a worthwhile read to those with a preexisting understanding.

Perhaps the most fascinating part of this book is the way in which it illustrates how the passage of time can impact the underlying fundamentals of a literary work. Looking back with the benefit of 200 years of experimental endeavor, we can say that much of Shelley’s science was wrong. But at the time, it fit neatly with the consensus view.

Obviously, “Frankenstein” was science fiction (even if there wasn’t anything called “science fiction” at that time) when it was written and remains so today. But it just goes to show that the very best sci-fi has always been a fiction of ideas, built upon the knowledge of today in an effort to extrapolate the discoveries of tomorrow. Shelley’s novel is one of the progenitors of that kind of story; insight into how it came about will always be welcome.

“Making the Monster” is an entertaining book, one that brings together elements of history and literary criticism and science writing and biography without really being any of those things. It’s a breezy read, intended to inform and incite. Don’t be surprised if you’re left wanting to learn more – more about Shelley, more about “Frankenstein” … and more about the world that formed them both.

This year marks 200 years since the publication of Frankenstein. There are a number of books being released this year to mark the anniversary of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s iconic novel. One of the more unusual is Making the Monster: The Science Behind Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein by Kathryn Harkup.
It is a curious hybrid, being part biography, part popular science and part literary analysis. Harkup sees Frankenstein as being as much a reflection of the emerging scientific revolution as it is of her Romantic ideology. The bulk of the book examines the scientific discoveries being made at the time and their possible influence on the writing of the novel.
The first quarter of the book is a recounting of Mary Shelley’s eventful life up to the publication of Frankenstein. It is a biography that sounds like a Victorian novel. Mary’s mother dies in childbirth. She is raised by her eccentric, politically radical father.
As a young teenager, Mary meets and falls in love with the married poet, Percy Shelly. They run off with Mary’s stepsister, Claire Clairmont. to Italy. Both families disown the couple. Mary gets pregnant but loses the baby a few days after the birth. The trio meets up with Lord Byron and Clair promptly becomes his mistress. Percy’s wife then commits suicide and he and Mary secretly wed.
The key event in the writing of Frankenstein occurred during an unseasonably cold and wet afternoon in the summer of 1816. The Shelleys were visiting Lord Byron and his friend Dr. John Polidori, at a villa near Lake Geneva when Byron suggested they have a competition to see who could write the best ghost story.
According to an account Mary wrote years later, a few days after Byron’s challenge, she awoke from a nightmare during an electrical storm with the germ of the plot. Some modern scholars dispute this account. Mary kept a journal during this this period, but the volume dealing with the months in which she began the novel is missing. Whether it was lost over time or deliberately destroyed is unknown.
Percy Shelly and Lord Byron both began stories but quickly tired of the Gothic genre and abandoned them. Later, Polidori reworked Byron's fragment into his own story, The Vampyre, which is considered to be the first vampire story., years before Dracula.
In this biographical section, Harkup speculates on how conversations Mary had with her husband , Byron and Polidori on the nature of life may have planted the seeds of the novel in her mind.
It does remain a mystery, how an 18 year-old with limited writing experience could craft an iconic and revolutionary novel on her first attempt.
At the time of publication, there were a number of Percy Shelly’s friends who suspected that he ghost wrote the book for his wife. But he always insisted that Mary was responsible for the entire work. However, Harkup makes clear that, as the book was being prepared for publication, Mary gave her husband carte blanche to edit the novel as he saw fit. We do not know what changes he made, if any.
After relating the origin story of Frankenstein, the author spends the bulk of her book portraying the state of science during the time Frankenstein was written. The early 19th Century was a transitional time in science. Many important discoveries were being made, but there was no overall framework to put them into context.
For example, the English chemist, Humphrey Davy, (a personal friend of Mary’s father) , used the electrolysis process to discover several new elements, including sodium and potassium. But there was, as yet, no periodic table to fit the elements into and to make predictions about other, undiscovered elements.
There were attempts to transplant organs into animals and humans and to transfuse blood. But knowledge of the immune system was largely nonexistent and it would not be until the 20th Century that tissue rejection was understood.
British ships were bringing back exotic flora and fauna from throughout the empire, but Charles Darwin’s natural selection theory was still decades away.
One of the most debated topics among scientists of the day was on the nature of life. Many believed that life was was created by an invisible fluid that drained away when a body perished.
When the Italian scientists Alessandro Volta and Luigi Galvani began experiments with batteries, some thought that electricity just might be that fluid. This led to some gruesome experiments on the bodies of executed prisoners.
In particular, the author details an experiment by Dr. Andrew Ure done immediately after the hanging of convicted murderer, Matthew Clydesdale. Ure opened Clydesdale’s neck and applied electric shocks to the spinal cord. The corpse began kicking and making facial gestures causing some observers to flee in terror.
Such experiments failed to reanimate the dead, but accounts of them may have given Mary Shelly the idea of using electric shock to bring the monster to life. In the course of these experiments, Dr. Ure came tantalizingly close to inventing the cardiac defibrillator some 150 years before its actual creation.
These stories should make the scientific section of Making the Monster enjoyable for those English-major types who come to this book mainly for background on Mary Shelley.
Harkup concludes her book with an account of Mary’s life after Frankenstein and a look at how the novel affected the culture of the time. Mary gave birth to three more children, nearly dying once in the process. Two of her children died from diseases and then Percy drowned after foolishly sailing off into an upcoming storm. Her stepsister Clair gave birth to a daughter by Lord Byron. She gave up the child to Byron who promptly stuck his daughter in a nunnery.
Mary and her surviving son returned to England, but her father in-law refused to see her and only grudgingly sent small amounts of money to help raise her son . She continued to write literary fiction, potboilers and journalism to make ends meet.
Mary Shelley substantially rewrote Frankenstein in 1831 for the publication of a second edition. It is this revised version that most readers of the novel are familiar with today.
Her last years were unpleasant. She had a falling out with her stepsister Clair, who turned out to be the only member of the Shelly-Byron group to live into old age. Large debts wiped out most of her son’s inheritance and her health began a steady decline. Mary Shelly died of a brain tumor in 1851 at age 53.
In a final, Gothic touch, a year after Mary’s death, her son opened up her desk to find the mummified remains of Percy Shelly’s heart, which she had brought back from Italy.
Making the Monster is recommended for aficionados of Frankenstein and for those interested in the history of science. The book is written in a lively style with nontechnical language. It is a welcome addition to the flood of Frankenstein-related books coming this year.

This book was a monster. (haha, did you see what I did there??) It took me over a week to read this book and it wasn't even that long, which is unheard of for me. The last time I took that long to read a book, I read Roots which took me a month and was back when I was in high school.

Basically, the premise of this book was conveyed in two fold. First, we have the somewhat biography of Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein. It wasn't complete by any means but it gave quite a bit about her life and how the events in her life contributed to Frankenstein. That was my favorite part because I just really love biographies. I knew nothing about Mary Shelley. Just the rumors that she kept her husband's heart in a jar when he died. Which, spoiler alert, actually happened.

The second part was the science behind Frankenstein. This is where the book lost me a little. I appreciate the hard work Kathryn Harkup put into researching the science but it was so dense. Everything was explained and I mean everything. Every single inventor, scientist, chemist, you name it, was given a mini bio and an in depth analysis of their experiments and how they contributed to the science behind Frankenstein. It got to be a bit much after a while. I think I glossed over a lot of it, which is unfortunate because I was generally curious about it. But I just couldn't get my brain to accept what I was reading.

But this book really helped me understand Frankenstein better. Even though, I think Victor was still an idiot, I understood him better. I think this would be a great supplement to have while reading Frankenstein, if you wanted to understand the science. I wish I had read this right after, as I would think my rating and overall likeness of the book would have been higher. I highly recommend this book for those that liked Frankenstein, enjoy learning about science or interesting in learning a little bit about Mary Shelley.

"Making the Monster" is about the science and people that influenced the making of the story "Frankenstein." The book started with a biography of Mary Shelley's life, focusing on the people and events that probably inspired parts of the novel. It ended with this biography, briefly talking about Mary Shelley's life after "Frankenstein" was published. The author also compared the books (the original and the 1831 revised version) and the books to the various play and movie adaptations of the story.

The middle of the book explored the scientific thought of the time that lead to the character, Victor, thinking (and succeeding) in making life from dead body parts. The author talked about how Victor might have made the monster (as the novel is vague), discussing things like the various ways they had to preserve dead body parts from decaying. The author talked about the Resurrection Men and how human anatomy was studied in the late 1700s and early 1800s. Frankly, the descriptions in this part were gory and gross. She also covered the process of decomposition in a human body after death.

She gave a brief history of surgical methods up to the early 1800s and considered how the various body parts might have been sewn together. She talked about organ transplants and blood transfusions--both what they could do at the time and the challenges we now know Victor would have faced in piecing a monster together. The author also talked about the electricity experiments going on around that time and the idea that electricity might bring a person back to life. She described how the proto-evolutionary ideas at that time influenced the story. Overall, this book was interesting but more gory in the science details than I cared for.

I don't think I realized just how little I knew about Mary Shelley and her husband, Percy Shelley or what was going on around Mary when Frankenstein was being written. Shelley's childhood was chaotic and lacking in any kind of formal education yet she was incredibly curious and well read. What little I knew about Mary Shelley I knew even less about what was going on in scientific world at the time and was very surprised about the number and scope of experiments involving electricity.

This book was fascinating. I had never really thought about putting Frankenstein in historical context and didn't realize just how much that would add to the story. While I found it interesting from the start it took me awhile to get invested in the book. This isn't a nonfiction book that reads like a novel, however, once the book got past Mary's childhood (about 10 - 15%) the pace picked up and I found it a really compelling read.

While this was a really interesting standalone I think it would be even better as companion read to Frankenstein. The book talks quite a bit about influences in the book itself which I think would make Frankenstein a richer and more interesting read. This was a compelling read with an unusual focus and a book that will bring fresh perspective on a classic.

I want you to imagine yourself in the middle of a drought-devastated landscape. The ground is cracked and bone dry, with little to no water in sight. In that ground is buried treasures. Not one big chest of treasure, but lots of little pieces, some bigger than others. And you need to dig in with your fingers to find it all.

Now, about this book.

Mary Shelley is so damn cool, y'all. If you get the chance, you should definitely read a well written biography on her. Her parents were progressive as hell, she and her husband were such radical thinkers, and they were friends with some of the coolest people of the 19th century.

She deserves better than this. There are so many tasty tidbits sprinkled throughout this book. You just have to dig through all of the science. So much dry, dry, dry science. This book is screaming.



Mary Shelley deserves better.

My recommendation: Read a Shelley biography, then go pick up Stiff by Mary Roach. She does this topic in an intensely interesting way.

What a damn shame.

Kathryn Harkup didn't skimp on discussing much in this thoroughly researched and insightfully arranged work. *Bonus: the Timeline of events appendix is a glorious addition rather than a necessary element to help readers understand the vast amount of information that is packed into the pages, which is not always the case when a book is as dense with dates, names, and scientific exploration.*

"Making the Monster: The Science Behind Mary Shelley's Frankenstein" explores the life of Mary W. G. Shelley and the influence of scientific exploration that exploded during the Enlightenment and the early 19th century on her most famous work of fiction.
Harkup is able to show that while clearly a work of science fiction, even in today's world where new medical advances are continuously being made, Shelley's Frankenstein utilizes many of the early 19th century's experimental science to bring to life a monster character that permeates pop culture in ways that are a far leap from the pages of the original novel. Without losing sight of the central work of fiction and Mary Shelley herself, Harkup uses Mary's biographical information to show that she would have been highly knowledgeable of the scientific exploration happening in Europe during her early life; Harkup is then able to express the numerous ways actual scientific research was addressed and used to horrify Shelley's original readers .
Rather than just connecting Frankenstein's Victor Frankenstein to the scientific world of the time period, Harkup's work (as the subtitle expresses) provides her readers with a fantastic historical overview of the various scientific practitioners and experiments that of the time period through to how they have been used, advanced, or debunked into the twenty-first century.

I will warn that as with any text that explores early scientific methods, at times the visuals can be slightly gruesome, but nothing that can be seen as unnecessary gore. I also found the book to occasionally drift toward repetitiveness, but this was mainly due to the structure of the chapters and the need to discuss the same scientist or biologist in various areas throughout the book. For example, if the chapter was discussing chemistry and a specific person's experiments are examined, that same person may be discussed again in the chapter about electricity with a brief introduction into who the person was each time.

Overall, I enjoyed this book and learned more than I expected. I would recommend this to readers wanting to know more about Shelley (both of them), Frankenstein, and/or those that want to know more about how scientific experimentation and discovery have progressed throughout history (particularly in Western Europe).
Thank you, NetGalley and Bloomsbury publishing for the ARC of Harkup's book in exchange for my honest review.

Frankenstein. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s creation is about to turn 200. Heralded as a “classic” by many, but not by me. I hated it, barely made it through, and really did for no other reason than to say I read it. Check out my review when I read it for Halloween ’16 for my complete thoughts. This might sound weird, but I like watching History Channel documentaries about the creation of the novel. In Search of History: Frankenstein, repackaged as a History’s Mysteries episode, and In Search of the Real Frankenstein are two top picks. I wish I had them to review and pair with this review of Kathryn Harkup’s upcoming 2018 release, Making the Monster: The Science Behind Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Thanks to the fine folks over at NetGalley, I scored an early eBook to read and review. As of this writing, the expected release date is February 8, 2018...

To read the rest of this review go to https://drewmartinwrites.wordpress.com/2018/01/16/making-the-monster-2018-review/

2018 marks the 200th anniversary of Mary Shelley's gothic masterpiece-- Frankenstein; or The Modern Prometheus. Widely recognized as one of the first works of science fiction, this revolutionary novel has truly withstood the test of time (and continues to haunt middle school literary criticism to this day!). Some may already know the broad strokes of how this story came to life: on a dark and stormy night (of course), 18 year old Mary joins her friends in a competitive game to see who can write the best horror story. Inspired by the rational ideals of the Enlightenment and recent advances in electricity research, Mary writes the short story that she will later develop into the novel we know and love.

Making the Monster dives quite bit deeper into the historical context of this work, piecing together not only Mary's biography but those of her family, friends and any intellectual or "natural philosopher" she may have been influenced by. This is interwoven with the upheavals in politics and the sciences leading up to her education and journey away from home. Though the narrative unravels into countless tangents and side-histories, it is well-organized and cohesive. This is a book for anyone who enjoys reading about the history of scientific progress-- the controversies, the blunders, and the experiments that got us where we are today. Whether or not you enjoyed (or even read) Frankenstein, if you appreciate its significance in history and are ready to fall down the rabbit-hole of alchemy, galvanism, and medical experimentation (oh my!), check it out.

Science and literature in a great book

I loved this book. Although I had never read the book by Mary Shelley I was familiar with the story. There were three themes in the book. The first was the biographical information on Shelley and her contemporaries. I found this far more interesting than I thought I would. The second is the scientific information, both what is known today and what was known in Shelley's time. The third was what scientific information Shelley would have been aware of, and how. The themes fit together seamlessly which makes for highly informative and enjoyable reading. I recommend this book for anyone interested in science.
Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of this book via Netgalley for review purposes.

Subtitled, “The Science Behind Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein,” this is a really interesting mix of biography (both of Mary Shelley herself and her novel), combined with a look at the scientific achievements of the time. The early 1800’s were a time of great scientific advances, when science itself was beginning to break into different branches. In fact, the term, ‘scientist,’ was, in itself, new and evolved from the word ‘artist,’ to describe what someone interested in science actually was.

This book is full of such nuggets, wrapped up within Mary Shelley’s life story – from her parents, William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft – her early life, with little formal schooling, but her love of reading and the stream of visitors to Godwin’s house to indulge in both business and intellectual conversation, which aroused her interest in various subjects. One of the acolytes who came to see Godwin was, of course, Percy Bysshe Shelley and Godwin’s theories about free love were obviously tested to the extreme when Shelley, already married, informed him that he hoped to form a union with his daughter. The couple eloped, along with Mary’s step sister, Claire (in pursuit of another poet, Byron, and who, Mary would find, was very hard to shake off).

There is the story of the famous evening at Villa Diodati at Lake Geneva, in 1816, ‘the year without summer,’ when heavy rain forced Shelley and his party to stay overnight with Byron. Byron’s proposal that they should each write a ghost story and the results of this. Oddly, neither Byron, nor Shelley, completed the project, but Byron’s ambitious doctor, John William Polidori, who had his own literary ambitions, and Mary, took up the challenge, and two staple figures of the horror genre were born – the vampire and Frankenstein.

Alongside the biography elements of the book and the history of how the novel came to be written, as well as how it was perceived and fared once published, there is also a great deal on the scientific advances of the time. This book will take you from early advances to chemistry, through anatomy rooms, from body snatching to the process of decay. It is not all pleasant, but nor was the subject matter and the ideas behind Mary Shelley’s novel. I found this a very interesting read and thought the author pitched the level just right – this was both interesting and easily understandable, even to someone without any scientific background. I received a copy of this book from the publisher, via NetGalley, for review.