Honestly, I’m not sure I care that much about the Halloween “shocker” that Mary Shelly got substantial help in revising her famous novel for publication. I’m reminded of Tess Gallhager’s comments about how she and Raymond Carver collaborated on many of his (and also her) short stories. Fun fact: the published Frankenstin text does not contain the phrase “I’ve created a monster!” at all. It must be from the movie: when the two words appear in the same sentence in the book. It’s always “the monster whom I had created” … the “whom” being the crucial element from “Who Wrote the Original ‘Frankenstein’?,” NYTimes.com Ideas blog, 31 October 2008
Literature | Mary Shelley created a monster out of her “waking dream,” but how much of the original “Frankenstein” was actually written by her husband, Percy? A new edition of the earliest recoverable manuscript of this much-altered novel shows his writing and editing were substantial. [TLS]