Frankenstein lives! 200 years of the book, the movies and the monster in pop culture and beyond
On the 200th birthday of Frankenstein: a visual overview including a facsimile reprint of the earliest-known manuscript and images of the beloved monster in film posters, magazines, playbills, prints, book covers, advertisements, packaging, comics and graphic novels
A great package at just $39.95: the hardcover features 200 illustrations
The only book in print providing an historical & VISUAL overview of Frankenstein.
Author Christopher Frayling (born 1946) is a popular cultural historian -- and the author of Once Upon A Time in Italy: The Westerns of Sergio Leone (Abrams, 2005), The 2001 File: Harry Lange and the Design of the Landmark Science Fiction Film (RAP 2015), and Vampyres: Genesis and Resurrection (T&H 2016)
Will appeal to LITERARY audiences, FILM buffs, and POPULAR CULTURE Monster fans
Works for the NOSTALGIA market, film poster DESIGN lovers, and BIBLIOPHILES.
Expect review coverage on Book REVIEW pages in print and on-line, popular culture and film pages in mainstream entertainment magazines like Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly, and GQ
Did you know there have been 120+ Frankenstein films?
Includes posters and memorabilia from films such as James Whale's Frankenstein (1931) and The Bride of Frankenstein (1935), both with Boris Karloff (still the predominant visual image of the monster), Hammer's The Curse of Frankenstein (1957)and Kenneth Branagh's/Francis Ford Coppola's Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994)
Pub date timed to have books in-store for Halloween!
Frankenstein lives! 200 years of the book, the movies and the monster in pop culture and beyondOn New Year’s Day 1818, Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein was first published in an anonymous three-volume edition of 500 copies. Some thought the book was too radical in its implications; a few found the central theme intriguing; no-one predicted its success.Since then, there have been many, many adaptations—120 films alone, at the last count—on screen, stage, in novels, comics and graphic novels, in advertisements and even on cereal packets. From a Regency nightmare, Frankenstein became a cuddly childhood companion—thoroughly munstered, so to speak. The story has been interpreted as a feminist allegory of birthing, an ecological reading of mother earth, an attack on masculinist science, the origin of science fiction, an example of “female gothic,” a reaction to the rise of the industrial proletariat and much else besides. Frankenstein lives! The F word has been applied, since the 1950s, to test-tube babies, heart transplants, prosthetics, robotics, cosmetic surgery, genetic engineering, genetically modified crops and numerous other public anxieties arising from scientific research. Today, Frankenstein has taken over from Adam and Eve as the creation myth for the age of genetic engineering.This book, celebrating the 200th birthday of Frankenstein, traces the journey of Shelley’s Frankenstein from limited-edition literature into the bloodstream of contemporary culture. With text by renowned Gothic scholar Sir Christopher Frayling, it includes new research on the novel’s origins; a facsimile reprint of the earliest-known manuscript version of the creation scene; visual material on adaptations for the stage, in magazines, on playbills, in prints and in book publications of the 19th century; visual essays on many of the film versions and their inspirations in the history of art; and Frankenstein in popular culture—on posters, advertisements, packaging, in comics and graphic novels.
Featured image, an 1882 Joseph Swain political cartoon for Punch, featuring Nationalist Charles Parnell cowering before a violent, simian Irishman, is reproduced from 'Frankenstein: The First Two Hundred Years.'
PRAISE AND REVIEWS
Publishers Weekly
Jones Everett
Frankenstein: The First Two Hundred Years by Christopher Frayling celebrates the 200th birthday of Frankenstein by tracing the journey of Mary Shelley’s creation from limited-edition literature to pop culture standby.
Publisher's Weekly
Everett Jones
Frankenstein: The First Two Hundred Years by Christopher Frayling celebrates the 200th birthday of Frankenstein by tracing the journey of Mary Shelley’s creation from limited-edition literature to pop culture standby.
Dread Central
Jonathan Barkan
Frankenstein: The First Two Hundred Years Celebrates the Legacy of Mary Shelley’s Creation
n3rdabl3
Angela DiLella
Frankenstein: The First 200 Years to Hit Bookshelves by Halloween
Daily Dead
Derek Anderson
Horror Highlights: Frankenstein: The First Two Hundred Years
The New York Times
Zoe Lescaze
...amply illustrated history of thenovel and its enduring fascination…Through prints, paintings, ephemera and photography, Frayling traces the creature’s visual evolution…between grindhouse film posters, New Yorker cartoons, postage stamps and the excellent woodcuts Lynd Kendall Ward created for a 1934 edition of the novel. The sheer quantity demonstrates just how thoroughly the creature has saturated contemporary culture...
Sci Fi Bulletin
Horror fans are very well served by Christopher Frayling’s, 'Frankenstein: The First Two Hundred Years'.
NPR
Genevieve Valentine
Half scholarly study, half art book, 'The First Two Hundred Years' offers some great details about the story's blockbuster success on the stage, and you-know-this-one glimpses of the movie versions of everyone's favorite monster… Frayling's an old hand at cultural histories, and his wry narration feels like a casual lecture from an aficionado.
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Reviewed in such wildly disparate media as the New York Times Book Review,Horrorphilia and It’s Nice That—where Owen Pritchard cites an early review calling Mary Shelley's 1818 novel, “perhaps the foulest toadstool that has yet sprung up form the reeking dunghill of the present time”—Sir Christopher Frayling’s Frankenstein: The First Two Hundred Years is one of the most highly anticipated books on our fall list and one of our top Holiday Gift Books of 2017. Published on the bicentennial of Mary Shelley’s game-changing, genre-spanning novel, this sweeping survey includes everything from a facsimile reprint of the earliest-known manuscript version of the creation scene to Simpsons takeoffs to Third Reich propaganda images. Featured here is the September 1964 cover of Mad magazine by Norman Mingo, published the same month that The Munsters premiered on CBS television. continue to blog
When Mary Shelley's then-anonymously authored Gothic horror novel Frankenstein came out in 1818, early reviews were not good. "Our readers will guess from this summary, what a tissue of horrible and disgusting absurdity this work presents," the Quarterly Review decried. "It is piously dedicated to Mr. Godwin, and is written in the spirit of his school. The dreams of insanity are embodied in the strong and striking language of the insane, and the author, notwithstanding the rationality of his preface, often leaves us in doubt whether he is not as mad as his hero… When we have… admitted that Frankenstein has passages which appal the mind and make the flesh creep, we have given it all the praise (if praise it can be called) which we dare to bestow. Our taste and our judgment alike revolt at this kind of writing, and the greater the ability with which it may be executed the worse it is—it inculcates no lesson of conduct, manners or morality; it cannot mend, and will not even amuse its readers, unless their taste have been deplorably vitiated…" Clearly, the reviewer got it wrong. Read more on the 200-year history of this game-changing novel, play, film, and character in Christopher Frayling's tremendous illustrated study, Frankenstein: The First Two Hundred Years, shipping now for Halloween delivery. continue to blog
There's no better book for Halloween inspiration than Sir Christopher Frayling's celebratory illustrated history, Frankenstein: The First Two Hundred Years. Featured here is a studio portrait of Basil Rathbone as Baron Wolf von Frankenstein in Universal Pictures' 1939 classic, Son of Frankenstein—the third in the studio's Frankenstein cycle and the last to feature Boris Karloff as the Monster. Reflections of Karloff and Bela Lugosi as the broken-necked assistant Ygor are visible in Rathbone's head mirror. continue to blog
FORMAT: Hbk, 9 x 11 in. / 208 pgs / 125 color / 75 b&w. LIST PRICE: U.S. $39.95 LIST PRICE: CANADA $53.95 ISBN: 9781909526464 PUBLISHER: Reel Art Press AVAILABLE: 11/21/2017 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Active AVAILABILITY: In stock TERRITORY: NA ONLY
Published by Reel Art Press. By Christopher Frayling.
Frankenstein lives! 200 years of the book, the movies and the monster in pop culture and beyond
On New Year’s Day 1818, Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein was first published in an anonymous three-volume edition of 500 copies. Some thought the book was too radical in its implications; a few found the central theme intriguing; no-one predicted its success.
Since then, there have been many, many adaptations—120 films alone, at the last count—on screen, stage, in novels, comics and graphic novels, in advertisements and even on cereal packets. From a Regency nightmare, Frankenstein became a cuddly childhood companion—thoroughly munstered, so to speak. The story has been interpreted as a feminist allegory of birthing, an ecological reading of mother earth, an attack on masculinist science, the origin of science fiction, an example of “female gothic,” a reaction to the rise of the industrial proletariat and much else besides. Frankenstein lives! The F word has been applied, since the 1950s, to test-tube babies, heart transplants, prosthetics, robotics, cosmetic surgery, genetic engineering, genetically modified crops and numerous other public anxieties arising from scientific research. Today, Frankenstein has taken over from Adam and Eve as the creation myth for the age of genetic engineering.
This book, celebrating the 200th birthday of Frankenstein, traces the journey of Shelley’s Frankenstein from limited-edition literature into the bloodstream of contemporary culture. With text by renowned Gothic scholar Sir Christopher Frayling, it includes new research on the novel’s origins; a facsimile reprint of the earliest-known manuscript version of the creation scene; visual material on adaptations for the stage, in magazines, on playbills, in prints and in book publications of the 19th century; visual essays on many of the film versions and their inspirations in the history of art; and Frankenstein in popular culture—on posters, advertisements, packaging, in comics and graphic novels.
