Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant passages that answer the question.
Query: Who wrote Frankenstein?
Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is a novel written by English author Mary Shelley (1797–1851) that tells the story of Victor Frankenstein, a young scientist who creates a hideous, sapient creature in an unorthodox scientific experiment. Shelley started writing the story when she was 18, and the first edition of the novel was published anonymously in London on 1 January 1818, when she was 20.[2] Her name first appeared on the second edition, published in 1823.
Frankenstein's monster, often erroneously referred to as "Frankenstein", is a fictional character who first appeared in Mary Shelley's 1818 novel "Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus". Shelley's title thus compares the monster's creator, Victor Frankenstein, to the mythological character Prometheus, who fashioned humans out of clay and gave them fire. 
The Man Who Wrote Frankenstein is a 2007 book written and published by John Lauritsen, in which the author argues that the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, not his wife Mary Shelley, is the real author of "Frankenstein" (1818), that the novel "has consistently been underrated and misinterpreted", and that its dominant theme is "male love". Lauritsen maintains that handwriting cannot be used to determine the actual author of "Frankenstein". His work received positive reviews in gay publications. However, some commentators in other publications rejected Lauritsen's views and supported the conventional view that "Frankenstein" was written by Mary Shelley.
As a popular visual gag, the joke has appeared in films, perhaps first in "After the Thin Man" (1936), with William Powell imitating the butler, and by director Mel Brooks, including "The Producers", "Young Frankenstein" and "" . According to Gene Wilder, who co-wrote the script of "Young Frankenstein" and played the title character, Brooks added the joke while shooting the scene, inspired by the old "talcum powder" routine. Marty Feldman, who played the hunchback Igor in "Young Frankenstein", later said: 
The first Nazi clone of Frankenstein's Monster was a creation of Nazi sympathizer Anna Frankenstein and her lover Von Rottz in the Summer of 1944. They had hoped to use the works of Victor Frankenstein to create an army of monsters to sell to the Nazis. When her Frankenstein's Monster was complete, Anna wrote a letter to Captain America and Bucky Barnes in order to lure them to her. They were attacked by the Nazi clone Frankenstein's Monster twice with the second time had Bucky snatched by Frankenstein's Monster. Von Rottz assisted Captain America into rescuing Bucky from being thrown off the castle by the Nazi clone Frankenstein's Monster. Before Von Rottz could betray Captain America, he is strangled to death by the Nazi clone of Frankenstein's Monster. Then the Nazi clone of Frankenstein's Monster grabbed Anna Frankenstein and fled into the woods. After freeing Anna, Captain America lured the Nazi clone of Frankenstein's Monster into the quicksand where it drowned. Anna felt guilty over what she did and joined her creation's fate upon committing suicide by quicksand. Although Anna Frankenstein's father set fire to the laboratory, other people have utilized Victor's technique to create other monsters.
When it was first released, "The Curse of Frankenstein" outraged many reviewers. Dilys Powell of "The Sunday Times" wrote that such productions left her unable to "defend the cinema against the charge that it debases", while the "Tribune" opined that the film was "Depressing and degrading for anyone who loves the cinema".
"The Man Who Wrote Frankenstein" received positive reviews from Jim Herrick in "Gay Humanist Quarterly", Hubert Kennedy in "The Guide", and Douglas Sadownick in "The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide". The book was also reviewed by Richard Labonte in the "San Francisco Bay Times".
Castle Frankenstein has been empty for years and the local council is planning to repossess it, when the Frankenstein family return, seeking to find hidden treasure, and to re-animate the Frankenstein monster."The Bloody Pit of Horror" wrote, "I literally cringe at the thought of ever stumbling across something as bad as this in the future. To make it worse, the damn thing goes on forever."
Though it is unrelated to the Universal series, the later "Frankenstein 1970" has the scientist Frankenstein, here played by Karloff, animate the Monster using a nuclear reactor.Although Frankenstein's hunchbacked assistant is often referred to as "Igor" in descriptions of the films, he is not so called in the earliest films. In both "Frankenstein" and "Bride of Frankenstein", Frankenstein has an assistant who is played both times by Dwight Frye who is crippled. In the original 1931 film the character is named "Fritz" who is hunchbacked and walks with the aid of a small cane. Fritz did not originate from the "Frankenstein" novel, and instead originated from the earliest recorded play adaptation, "Presumption; or, the Fate of Frankenstein", where he was played by Robert Keeley.
Frankstein's full name in the film is Baron Charles Frankenstein, unlike Mary Shelley's Victor Frankenstein or the classic Universal Studios movie's Henry Frankenstein. The dwarf in the film is named Rinaldo, also the name of blacklisted "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein" screenwriter Frederic I. Rinaldo, who also wrote the scripts for several Universal films, including "Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man" (1951); "Hold That Ghost" (1941); "The Black Cat" (1941) and "The Invisible Woman" (1940).
Phillip confronts Dr. Frankenstein about his discoveries, but Frankenstein draws his gun and Phillip flees. He is aided in escape by Sara, a woman from a nearby village who has come to the castle to ask Frankenstein for help in finding her sister, one of several children who have gone missing throughout various villages and towns. It is revealed that Vladimir, who has been supplying Frankenstein with illegal materials, has been working with Judge Rothenbush and that the judge is behind the disappearances of the children, though his motives are never explained. Frankenstein is disgusted with this conspiracy and plants a bomb to kill both Vladimir and the judge. Phillip and Sara attempt to stop the bomb, but fail. Gabrielle, who was among the disappeared children, is killed in the explosion.
Kennedy wrote that Lauritsen was "unafraid to go against accepted opinion and the entrenched literary establishment" and that his work was "intriguing and very readable", based on a careful review of the relevant evidence, and a welcome contribution to literature on the subject. He endorsed Lauritsen's argument that the quality of "Frankenstein" is inconsistent with that of works known to have been written by Mary Shelley, suggesting that the work was not by her, and also credited Lauritsen with refuting the argument that the fact that the surviving parts of the original manuscript of "Frankenstein" are in Mary Shelley's handwriting shows that the work must have been composed by her. He found Lauritsen's view that the novel's theme is "male love" persuasive, and predicted that it would appeal to gay men. However, he also predicted that while Lauritsen's thesis that Percy Bysshe Shelley is the real author of "Frankenstein" might be accepted by readers with no vested interest in the issue, it would be "vehemently rejected out of hand" by the "literary establishment".
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was born on August 30, 1797. She wrote the novel "Frankenstein" in 1816, and published it in 1818. The holiday Frankenstein Day was created to honor Mary Shelly and Frankenstein, every year on the anniversary of her birthday. Frankenstein Day has also been known as National Frankenstein Day.
Igor's line "walk this way" in the film inspired the song "Walk This Way" by Aerosmith. According to Gene Wilder, who co-wrote the script and played Frederick Frankenstein, the joke was added while shooting the scene by Mel Brooks, inspired by the old "talcum powder" joke.
"The Man Who Wrote Frankenstein" was first published in 2007 by Pagan Press.
Richard Brinsley Peake (19 February 1792 – 4 October 1847) was a dramatist of the early nineteenth century best remembered today for his 1823 play "Presumption; or, the Fate of Frankenstein", a work based on the novel "Frankenstein" by Mary Shelley. It was Peake, not Shelley, who wrote the famous line, "It lives!"
Lauritsen argues that Percy Bysshe Shelley, not his wife Mary Shelley, is the real author of "Frankenstein" (1818), that the book "has consistently been underrated and misinterpreted", and that its dominant theme is "male love" or homoeroticism. Lauritsen criticizes feminists for constructing "a Mary Shelley myth, according to which she was a major literary figure, one whose genius had been overshadowed - not only by her husband, but also by the other "male" Romantics: Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Keats." According to Lauritsen, Percy Bysshe Shelley did not want his authorship of "Frankenstein" to be known to the public, and for unknown reasons decided to attribute authorship to Mary Shelley, thus helping to begin a "hoax" that has persisted up to the present. Lauritsen maintains that revisions to "Frankenstein" made in 1823 and 1831 weakened the work, and that while it was ostensibly Mary Shelley who revised "Frankenstein" into its 1831 form, it may primarily have been revised by the political philosopher William Godwin.
The feminist Germaine Greer dismissed Lauritsen's thesis in "The Guardian", writing that while he argues that Mary Shelley was not well educated enough to have written "Frankenstein", his argument fails because "it is not a good, let alone a great novel and hardly merits the attention it has been given." Lauritsen replied that "Frankenstein" "is a radical and disturbing work, containing some of the most beautiful prose in the English language ... a profound and moving masterpiece, fully worthy of its author, Percy Bysshe Shelley."
Charles E. Robinson rejected Lauritsen's thesis in "The Original Frankenstein" (2008), arguing that the testimony of authors such as Lord Byron, William Godwin, Claire Clairmont, Charles Clairmont, and Leigh Hunt, as well as the "nature of the manuscript evidence", showed that the work was "conceived and mainly written by Mary Shelley".
Lauritsen argues that handwriting alone cannot be used to determine the actual author of "Frankenstein". The drafts and manuscripts are incomplete and in the final stages. Moreover, portions of the novel were dictated by Shelley as shown by several letters.
The creature has often been mistakenly called "Frankenstein". In 1908 one author said "It is strange to note how well-nigh universally the term "Frankenstein" is misused, even by intelligent people, as describing some hideous monster".[39] Edith Wharton's The Reef (1916) describes an unruly child as an "infant Frankenstein."[40] David Lindsay's "The Bridal Ornament", published in The Rover, 12 June 1844, mentioned "the maker of poor Frankenstein." After the release of Whale's cinematic Frankenstein, the public at large began speaking of the creature itself as "Frankenstein". This also occurs in Frankenstein films, including Bride of Frankenstein (1935) and several subsequent films, as well as in film titles such as Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. Furthermore, the 1939 film Son of Frankenstein introduced an evil laboratory assistant, Ygor (Bela Lugosi), who never existed in the original narrative.
Herrick commended Lauritsen for presenting a large amount of evidence, and found much of that evidence persuasive, including the difference in quality between "Frankenstein" and works such as "Valperga" and "The Last Man", as well as that between the original and revised editions of "Frankenstein" itself, and Mary Shelley's lack of interest in the themes of Percy Bysshe Shelley's work. Herrick credited Lauritsen with carefully examining the "extra-textual evidence", and agreed with him that the fact that the original manuscript of "Frankstein" is in Mary Shelley's handwriting does not show that she composed the work. However, while he agreed with Lauritsen that Percy Bysshe Shelley had homoerotic feelings and deep friendships for men and that "Frankenstein" "contains potential homosexual relationships", he disagreed with Lauristen's view that "Frankenstein" was primarily written for gay men.
"The Man Who Wrote Frankenstein" includes a favorable review of "Shelley's Fiction" (1998) by Phyllis Zimmerman, a book in which Zimmerman argues for Percy Bysshe Shelley's authorship of "Frankenstein", and a short bibliography of books and articles about Percy Bysshe Shelley and "Frankenstein". Lauritsen praises poet Edmund Blunden's "" (1946), calling it the best short biography about Percy Bysshe Shelley.
Frankenstein Castle () is a hilltop castle in the Odenwald overlooking the city of Darmstadt in Germany. It is thought that this castle may have been an inspiration for Mary Shelley when she wrote her 1818 Gothic novel "Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus".
Dmitri explores the main laboratory, only to be discovered and knocked unconscious by the zombots. When Dmitri wakes, he is a prisoner of the caretaker, who reveals himself to be Dr. Viktor Frankenstein, a deranged descendent of the original Victor Frankenstein, who went rogue and turned against his Nazi masters. Dmitri attempts to recruit Frankenstein, who seems noncommittal about defection. Instead, Frankenstein proposes an experiment he says will end the war: fusing together the brains from the captured Sergei and a Nazi officer into one whole. Dmitri does nothing to save Sergei, who swears his revenge. Frankenstein moves on to experimenting on Dmitri, but aircraft begin bombing the laboratory and the last surviving Soviet soldier, Sacha, shoots Frankenstein dead. Sacha takes the camera from Dmitri and flees, just as the composite being made of Sergei's body comes to life and kills Dmitri.