{"product_id":"frankenstein-letter-signed-1826-mary-shelley-letter-mentioning-frankenstein-and-recalling-paradise-before-the-fall","title":"Frankenstein letter signed | 1826, Mary Shelley letter mentioning Frankenstein and recalling “Paradise before the Fall”","description":"\u003cp\u003eA major Mary Shelley manuscript, bringing together Frankenstein, Percy Shelley and her memories of “Paradise before the fall” in a single extraordinary letter.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMary Shelley letters that mention Frankenstein almost never come to market. This is the only example known to have surfaced publicly in the past thirty years. Written in 1826, only eight years after the first edition of Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus was published in 1818, Shelley ends this remarkable letter with the wonderfully casual question, “How goes on Frankenstein at Porte St Martin?” To see the name Frankenstein written in the hand of the woman who created it is an extraordinary thing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAutograph letter signed by Mary Shelley, Kentish Town, 11 June 1826. Four pages, quarto, 250 x 202 mm, written closely in Shelley’s hand and signed “Mary Shelley”, with integral address panel to John Howard Payne in Paris. Black wax seal, with seal tear affecting the ends of four lines on the third page; some dust-staining, marks and creasing at folds.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe reference to Frankenstein comes almost as an afterthought, squeezed beneath Shelley’s signature at the very end of the letter. Shelley was writing to Payne in Paris about Le Monstre et le magicien, the new theatrical adaptation which had opened at the Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin the previous day. The production featured Thomas Potter Cooke, who had already created the role of the Creature in Richard Brinsley Peake’s hugely successful Presumption; or, The Fate of Frankenstein in London.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhat makes the line so compelling is its informality. Shelley does not explain what Frankenstein is or give the full title of the novel. She simply asks, “How goes on Frankenstein?” By 1826 the name was already enough. Her creation was beginning to move beyond the confines of the book and into theatre, visual culture and public consciousness, on the way to becoming one of the most recognisable literary creations in the world.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe rest of the letter is equally rich. Four years had passed since Percy Bysshe Shelley drowned in Italy, and Mary was still living in the shadow of that loss. She writes of emerging from a long emotional winter, likening herself to a butterfly struggling from its chrysalis, and looks back repeatedly towards the life she had shared with Shelley and their circle.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHer most moving passage concerns Edward John Trelawny, then recovering from wounds sustained in Greece. The thought of seeing him takes her immediately back to the life she had lost: “He belongs to my past life, to days of bliss, to Paradise before the fall.” Trelawny had been part of the circle of Percy Shelley and Edward Williams, both of whom died in the boating accident of July 1822. Mary writes that seeing him would remind her that “once Shelley, once Edward were my companions”, contrasting that former existence with the “poor, little, rooted, rain drenched plant” she felt herself to have become in England.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe letter therefore brings together, within four extraordinary pages, the two forces that had come to define Mary Shelley’s life: the memory of Percy Shelley and the continuing life of Frankenstein. There is also a vivid glimpse of Shelley herself, attending the opera with Jane Williams, speaking Italian throughout the evening and writing at length about performances by Giovanni Battista Velluti and Giuditta Pasta, whose Medea affected her so strongly that she required smelling salts to prevent herself from creating a scene in the theatre.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe recipient was John Howard Payne, the American actor, playwright and poet best remembered for “Home, Sweet Home”. Payne and Shelley maintained an extensive correspondence during this period. He had declared his feelings for her and proposed marriage, but was refused, their relationship continuing instead as a close friendship.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe letter also has significant textual importance. It was omitted from Frederick L. Jones’s 1944 edition of Shelley’s letters but was later published in Betty T. Bennett’s The Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, volume I, pp. 519–522. Bennett’s text was taken from Payne’s letterbook rather than from the present original, resulting in minor differences of spelling, readings and omissions. The present manuscript therefore preserves Shelley’s original text.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAutograph letters in which Mary Shelley explicitly names Frankenstein are exceptionally rare in commerce. When this letter was previously catalogued by Andrusier Autographs, it was identified as, to their knowledge, the only Shelley letter mentioning Frankenstein to have appeared on the market in the preceding thirty years.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFor a collector of Frankenstein, Romantic literature or the history of the Gothic, the appeal is unusually direct: Mary Shelley herself writing the name Frankenstein, naturally and without ceremony, only eight years after the first edition of Frankenstein was published. Paired with a first edition of Frankenstein, or even a significant later edition, the effect would be electrifying....\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mary Shelley","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":64522562306425,"sku":null,"price":45000.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0607\/3119\/5647\/files\/image_9.jpg?v=1789046344","url":"https:\/\/www.baylissbooks.co.uk\/products\/frankenstein-letter-signed-1826-mary-shelley-letter-mentioning-frankenstein-and-recalling-paradise-before-the-fall","provider":"Bayliss Rare Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}