
When Victor is five years old, his parents adopt Elizabeth Lavenza (the orphaned daughter of an expropriated Italian nobleman) whom Victor later marries. He is obsessed with studying theories of alchemists, though when he is older he realizes that such theories are considerably outdated. From a young age, Victor has a strong desire to understand the world. Born in Naples, Italy, into a wealthy Genevan family, Victor and his younger brothers, Ernest and William, are sons of Alphonse Frankenstein and the former Caroline Beaufort.

Victor begins by telling of his childhood.

The recounted story serves as the frame for Frankenstein's narrative.

Frankenstein starts to recover from his exertion he sees in Walton the same obsession that has destroyed him and recounts a story of his life's miseries to Walton as a warning. Frankenstein has been in pursuit of the gigantic man observed by Walton's crew. A few hours later, the crew rescues a nearly frozen and emaciated man named Victor Frankenstein. During the voyage, the crew spots a dog sled driven by a gigantic figure. Robert Walton is a failed writer who sets out to explore the North Pole in hopes of expanding scientific knowledge. The story takes place in the eighteenth century (the letters are dated as "17-"). It documents a fictional correspondence between Captain Robert Walton and his sister, Margaret Walton Saville. Summary Captain Walton's introductory narrative įrankenstein is a frame story written in epistolary form.

Shelley travelled through Europe in 1815, moving along the river Rhine in Germany, and stopping in Gernsheim, 17 kilometres (11 mi) away from Frankenstein Castle, where, two centuries before, an alchemist had engaged in experiments. Her name first appeared in the second edition, which was published in Paris in 1821. Shelley started writing the story when she was 18, and the first edition was published anonymously in London on 1 January 1818, when she was 20. Frankenstein tells the story of Victor Frankenstein, a young scientist who creates a sapient creature in an unorthodox scientific experiment. Frankenstein or, The Modern Prometheus, is an 1818 novel written by English author Mary Shelley.
