Customer Reviews

Frankenstein (Longman Cultural Editions)

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Book in great condition. Different edition or cover of book received then shown for sale. Disappointed with that. Unsure if correct book. Son needed it for college so went to school bookstore to purchase correct edition.:(

Frankenstein is a great work, though one that has consistently been underrated and misrepresented. Frankenstein is, in the words of Donald H. Reiman, "the most seminal literary work of the Romantic period". In my opinion, it is a work of profound and radical ideas, written in poetically powerful prose. Frankenstein is not really a gothic novel, although its author sometimes employs gothic conventions and language, and even spoofs them. Rather, Frankenstein is an enduring myth, a novel of ideas, and above all, a moral allegory about the evil effects of intolerance and prejudice, ostracism and alienation, both to the victims of intolerance and to society at large.
I'll concentrate on thisparticular edition -- the Longman edition edited by Susan J. Wolfson. Most importantly, this is the original 1818 edition, rather than the inferior, bowdlerized 1831 edition -- which is the most common, and the only one that was available for well over a century. Unfortunately, this edition can not be recommended owing to the typeface, Bodoni, which makes the text hard to read and makes it difficult to concentrate. Bodoni can sometimes be effective as a display typeface, but it is never appropriate for extended text. This is too bad, as there is some good material in the back. The best editions of the 1818 text are those edited by James Rieger (Chicago) or by J. Paul Hunter (Norton).
Please check out my own book, The Man Who Wrote Frankenstein, which makes the case that Frankenstein was really written by Percy Bysshe Shelley, one of the greatest poets in the English language. I also argue that male love, both idealized and demonized, is a central theme of Frankenstein.
Five stars for Frankenstein, three stars for this edition.

Ok so I order 2 books.. One of them arrived in time. The other book never arrived at all.. I'm already halfway till I finish with my courses and I still don't have the book.. The book is not even expensive it's "Frankenstein", such a common book.