Category Archives: Literature

The true adventure of young King Edward III, “The Boy King’s Tale: as Told by Geoffrey Chaucer”

Paperback Cover Boy King's Tale Young King Edward III and Philippa of HainautJust in the nick of time for the coronation of King Charles III, interest in the British monarchy is on the front page with constant stories about the spare, Prince Harry and all the royal family drama comes a new historical novel of the original royal family drama that stood at the crux of absolute monarchy and the parliamentary democracy of modern life, “whether we live by rule-of-law or whim of capricious overlord”.  One night in 1330, a young king and his wife were targeted for murder to put an infant prince on the thrown, so others could control the destiny of one of the world’s powers.

“The Boy King’s Tale: as Told by Geoffrey Chaucer” a new historical fictionalized biographical novel by the author of “Secret Memoirs of Mary Shelley” and “Aces: a novel of Pilots in WWII”, Michael January, is an entertaining and engaging visionary through medieval England. The story follows the young life of King Edward III as he is anointed as the “boy king” when his mother and her lover plot to take the crown from his father, Edward II, and must navigate the treacherous political landscape of the time. The novel is told by the great storyteller Geoffrey Chaucer as one of his “tales”.

Young Edward is kept separated from his father by his mother Queen Isabella, daughter of the King of France, who now hates her husband because he has abandoned her bed for a series of male “favorites”. Mortimer, a charismatic Lord of England who has declared himself to be the Earl of March, guarding the border with Wales, is being held in the Tower of London and scheduled to lose his head. Isabella, secretly in love with him, helps him escape to France where they raise an army, cross the channel and defeat her husband, having him murdered in his prison cell, and putting her teenage son on the throne so they can jointly rule by a council they control.

When the young King Edward leads an army to war, he meets teenage Philippa of Hainaut, who will be the love of his life against the forces fighting against him, and he must outwit his enemies to make it so, but his temper and will lead him deeper into the traps set for him, when his uncle’s execution is engineered. In jealousy and blame, he believes his mother’s lies that Philippa has been unfaithful, leading to one fateful night, on the eve of his turning 18, when Parliament is on the verge of granting him full rights. Mortimer plans to murder him, the same as his father, and his young wife as well to put their infant son on the throne and rule as a dictator. Edward discovers the plot, but can he save his bride Philippa and himself locked without friends at Nottingham Castle, facing a knife’s edge moment that will change England forever? A celebration of young love and a boy seeking a father, who takes one as a friend who would betray his trust, and must realize the truth before his fate is sealed.

The Boy King's Tale Review Quotes and Awards

The author’s two favorite review quotes: “This story was unlike anything I’ve ever read before!  …the storyline and the twists and turns, it was just great. I loved the writing style…it made the reading experience amazing!” from an 18-year-old girl in the UK, and “They are some books you enjoy and forget, then, there are some books you devour, inhale and BREATHE. The Boy King’s Tale is one of those books.”

Some Other Review Quotes

“A story redolent with intrigues, battles, and psychological warfare, beautifully written.  For anyone that loves tales of knights, derring-do, and chivalry, a fantastic read but also for anyone who just enjoys a rollicking good story!” Reader’s Favorite 5-Star Review

“Intermingles the historical fiction details and tantalizing character portraits, steeped with fast-paced betrayal and intrigue. The storyline portrays intense conflict within an authentic setting, and the novel stays grounded while balancing evocative details with accurate period vernacular.” Publisher’s Weekly Booklife Prize

“The Boy King’s Tale: as Told by Geoffrey Chaucer” by Michael January receives five stars and our “Highly Recommended” Award of Excellence. The author does a remarkable job of showing the entwining story of two vastly different loves… all enmeshed in the story of Edward II’s fall and the resulting political turmoil. The characters come alive, emoting real human emotions: abandonment, pain, fear, and ultimately, love, courage, and strength. An unputdownable must-read for anyone interested in this medieval world…a remarkable historical novel.” Historical Fiction Company

“An entertaining, well-written account of a time so long ago.” Kirkus Reviews

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Christie’s Auctions Original Frankenstein

Frankenstein Original Edition in Three VolumesNow you can buy your own copy of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s Frankenstein for about a quarter-million dollars. Update: It actually sold for $1.17 million! What is referred to as the “Manney Copy” of the original 1818 edition of Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus in three volumes, from the first 500 run printing from Lackington, Hughes, which went on sale January 1, 1818, at the Temple of the Muses. According to Christie’s, the copies are exceptionally rare, and the only set to appear at auction since 1985 when they were bought by Richard Manney, who then auctioned them at Christie’s in 1991. The books are being sold from the Literature Collection of Theodore B. Baum. described as being in unsophisticated, crisp, and clean condition. Manney was in the advertising field, a buyer for media companies. An avid collector, he said he had 10,000 books he collected from his youth, and the Mary Shelley Frankenstein was among 600 books he auctioned at Christie’s for about $4 million.

The catalog description: “Three volumes, 12mo (190 x 109mm). Half-titles and advertisements in each volume (a few light spots at ends, neat erasures from verso of each title page, and from vol 3 inside front cover). Original blue-gray boards, drab paper spines, printed spine labels, uncut (light wear to spines, with scattered tiny chips at joints and to vol. 2 spine label, 1cm repaired tear to vol. 1 spine); dark blue morocco pull-off case by Riviere with enclosed asbestos lining, chemises. Provenance: E.L.A. Bibl. (ink stamp on verso of each title page) – Richard Manney (his sale, Sotheby’s, 11 October 1991, lot 283).”

This is one of the most significant literature auctions in 30 years. Other books offered from The Exceptional Literature Collection of Theodore B. Baum of 173 lots include five Jane Austen first editions, three from Charlotte Bronte,  a Mutiny on the Bounty, Lord Byron’s Don Juan, Don Quixote, five of Charles Dickens, three Arthur Conan Doyles, Shakespeare, Melville, Dostoyevsky, Darwin’s Origin of the Species, Alexandre Dumas, among others.

The estimated auction price, between $200,000 and $300,000. The auction is scheduled for September 14, 2021.

Christies Baum Literary Auction

Secret Memoirs of Mary Shelley  – E-Book

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Free Frankenstein Audiobook from Audible for Pandemic Listening

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein Dan StevensIn the face of the coronavirus pandemic, Audible is stepping forward to serve all those closed schools, kids, and stay-at-homes with free access to a broad assortment of titles, mostly works in the public domain of classic literature, fable and fairy tales and children’s stories. One of them available without requiring a password or login is Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus, narrated by Dan Stevens of Downton Abbey fame.

The free audiobooks are available at stories.audible.com.

Other classics include the likes of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, narrated by Thandie Newton of Westworld, and Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Return of Sherlock Holmes, Jack London’s Call of the Wild , Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book, Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and children’s titles like Winnie The Pooh. and Beatrix Potter stories.

The intent is for learning opportunities for younger folks, but while you’re at home waiting for the Covid-19 epidemic to pass by your door, why not read up on a few classics.

According to the Audible site: “For as long as schools are closed, we’re open. Starting right now, young and old everywhere you go can quickly stream an amazing selection of stories, including titles in six distinctive languages, that will assist them to go on dreaming, studying.”

All stories in five collections are free to stream to desktop, laptop, phone or tablet.

If you want to listen to Mary Shelley’s Secret Memoirs for a free trial with a signup if you’re new to audiobooks. Free with Trial at Audible.

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Mary Shelley’s Invisible Girl meets the Invisible Man

Engraving of Rosina by Boxall of Mary Shelley's Invisible GirlA recent auction notice appeared for a sale at Bonham’s auction house in London. One of the items was listed fairly simply as “The newly discovered handwritten manuscript of part of The Invisible Girl, a semi-autobiographical short story by Mary Shelley (1797-1851)” with an auction sale price estimate between 2,000-4,000 pounds. It was being offered with items of other female authors, including a first edition of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone that had been in the possession of Rowling’s literary agent, estimated at 40-60,000 pounds at auction and letters from Margaret Mitchell, author of Gone With the Wind, a collection of what could be argued as the three most commercially successful women writers, or writers of any gender if you count movie box office.

The Mary Shelley manuscript offered consisted of a few pages of writing, densely packed on letter paper. There was no date of the writing on the documents but the appearance of the story in Keepsake was 1833 and said to be written in 1832. And even though Shelley’s Frankenstein shares shelf space and movie marquee history from Universal Pictures with H.G. Wells’ The Invisible Man, first serialized in Pearson’s Weekly in 1897, they had little in common, but would be make for perhaps an intriguing pairing.

The Invisible Girl is one of a hand full of Gothic tales that Mary Shelley published in The Keepsake. Magazine in from 1829 to 1834, capitalizing on her notoriety following the re-publishing of Frankenstein under her name. Her writing credit for the story in the Keepsake was not her name, but “By the Author of Frankenstein”. Others stories she wrote around the same period include “Ferdinando Eboli” (1829), “The Evil Eye” (1830), “Transformation” (1831), “The Dream” (1833), and “The Mortal Immortal” (1834).

The story includes several common motifs of the Gothic Terror Tale like those read during that summer by Lake Geneva, featuring an unhappy heroine, overbearing tyrant guardian, and a ghost figure wandering the landscape, like the story originally thought of by John Polidori. And like several other works by Shelley, “The Invisible Girl” employs a framed narrative often referred to in Gothic literature as a “Fragment”, like the Walton letters of Frankenstein, a device rather akin to the “found footage” horror film style of today. It wouldn’t be referred to as a “short story” until sometime later. The frame involved surrounds a portrait of a girl, and the telling of the tale to a visitor.

The Invisible Girl is a pure Gothic Tale that involves a ghost, but is not supernatural, more a mood piece of lost love and longing. It takes place on the coast of Wales, and the title refers to an apparition of a ghost-like figure, than turns out to be a young woman wandering the coast.

It is the story of Rosina, who lives with her guardian, Sir Peter Vernon. She is secretly engaged to his son, Henry. While Henry has traveled away from the estate, Sir Peter discovers the relationship and sends Rosina from the house. He later regrets his harshness and searches for Rosina, but cannot find her. He tells his son that she is dead when he returns home. Henry joins a search to recover her body, but is told by villagers of a ghostly figure of a young woman seen wandering the woods at night, they call the Invisible Girl. Henry ultimate discovers Rosina hiding in the ruin of a castle tower in the woods and realizes she is the roaming apparition. Sir Peter forgives his son for the secret engagement, and the two young lovers are at last married and together.

The story is said to be semi-autobiographical, but perhaps only draws on some of Mary’s life experiences, with rejection by the noble father of a lover, as she had been by Shelley’s father. And the Wales setting may just be a device of a remote romantic setting, or perhaps echo the location of her half-sister’s Fanny’s familiar ground. The ghost of the young woman lost in the landscape may connect to Fanny’s suicide, and Fanny’s confession to Mary that she felt she was the invisible daughter in her family. The story features scenes in a boat tossed on the sea trying to reach shore and nearly lost, which echoes both Shelley’s death in Italy and the near drowning of Mary, Percy and Claire in crossing the channel in 1814 described in the journals and the Secret Memoirs. Unlike the tragedies she might draw on for the story, it ends happily with lovers reunited and reconciled with the father, a happy ending Mary could not quite manage in her own life.

The publishing of the story included a portrait of a girl said to be the subject in the story, Rosina, seen winsomely reading in a parlor with an Italian musical instrument and a parrot. The image was a painting by William Boxall, engraved by J.C. Edwards. Boxhall, who later became director of Britain’s National Galley, early in his career focused on portraiture. He had returned from art study travels in Italy, so the painting may be from that trip and not an original for the story. William Boxall was a friend of William Wordsworth and had painted his portrait in 1831. Wordsworth and Mary Shelley knew one another through her father, so Mary may have called upon Boxall to provide a portrait for her story to be published. Mary may also have a connection to the engraver. J.C. Edwards in the 1820s was noted to be an illustrator of Shakespeare and Mary’s early friends though her father, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Charles Lamb, both made their reputations on the bard’s revival. Who the model in the image of Rosina is, provides some mystery all its own.

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All is True. I’m not so sure.

All is True Poster ImageKenneth Branagh stars in and directs an English movie about the later days in the life of William Shakespeare, from a screenplay by Ben Elton. The title is taken from an alternate title, or perhaps more an advertising slogan, for a production of the Life of Henry VIII offered at the Globe Theater, during which, according to the pre-titles a prop canon set the Thames bankside theatre ablaze, burning it to the ground, and with it the creative life of Shakespeare. The film begins with him galloping home to Stratford-Upon-Avon, to settle back into a quiet country life, haunted by the memory of his son, Hamnet, who reportedly died of plague in 1596 at the age of eleven.

The title of “all is true” seems to suggest that the film is making the argument against the controversies surrounding the authorship of the plays and poetry William Shakespeare. The film presents an engaging enough but fairly dramatically limited picture of the domestic home life of the renowned author, taking some sparse public records of his activities in Stratford and drawing a picture of life at home, with a Puritan son-in-law hoping for his fortune and wife long abandoned for his busy days in the London.

If this was the intent, I am unconvinced. The film does make a very clever argument for the oddity of bequeathing his “second best bed” in his will to his wife Anne Hathaway, but not all that much else. The film furthers an authorship controversy theme by postulating that Shakespeare doted on some poetry verses he believed written by his dead son, when his daughter eventually claims that she came up with them and her brother only wrote then down, because boys were taught to write.

This curiously intersects with some of the controversy or at least mystery, surrounding the anonymous publishing of Frankenstein, leading to questions of its authorship over the centuries, and thematically at the center of the recent biopic version of “Mary Shelley”. Kenneth Branagh directed “Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein” the movie that intended to hear closer to the novel than previous film versions, so that Branagh will be forever connected in search algorithms to Mary Shelley. Perhaps even how you found this article.

The arguments against the man from Stratford, son of a middle-class glove maker, who left a limited education to write of kings and foreign lands with such convincing authenticity, to return to life of middle-class modesty, has always been about where does writing inspiration come from. Some have argued that it was about class, but I have always held it is about experience. The writer of “All is True” was born in Australia, but he writes about Shakespeare because he went to a college in Stratford, and so was steeped in the lore of the town.

If you visit Stratford-Upon-Avon, signs in the famed tourist town will warn you that only seven sites in town are officially connected to an historic William Shakespeare. What it doesn’t say is that none of them point to a creator of a library of plays and poems that have defined the English speaking world. The film posits that after the Globe burned down, Shakespeare decided he would never write again and spent his days in solitude digging a garden to honor is dead son, named Hamnet, so close to Hamlet it seems a misspelling by a grave marker mason. In seeming to attempt to answer where the inspiration and knowledge to produce his body of work came from, in the form a question asked by a young writer hopeful, like many a Comicon convention attendee might ask at an autograph signing, “how he did it”, Branagh as Shakespeare, answers dismissively of the earnest seeker of wisdom, that it was all from his imagination.

Mark Twain, who notoriously offered his opinion on many things, especially authorship, a subject he felt close to, was a non-believer in the man from Stratford. Twain complained of his friend and companion author, Bret Harte, that the dialogue of his pioneer west characters had the ring of an author who wrote of people he observed, rather than a life he lived, though the writing did come from his travels in the worlds of his stories. Twain traveled and wrote of his travels, but his most genius books came from his earliest days of personal experience and drawn on people he knew well.

In the present worlds of film and television, aspiring writers are told to “write what you know”. An entire system of hiring writers to work in writers rooms, based not on the alien worlds they can imagine but the authenticity of the lives they’ve experienced are what counts. Writing a courtroom show, hire a former lawyer, a spy show, a former spy. Maybe add some imagination.

Does this relate to the teeming theatre world of the Elizabethan Age of the late 16th Century? Could a young man of 19 from a small provincial town, seeking a stage acting career, sit down in some inexpensive hovel in London and invent entirely from his own imagination the accurate lives of royal households, details of foreign lands and indeed what was important to foreigners, setting his stories in Italy as mere convention, and produce accurate descriptions of the landscapes of Burgundy, France, cited from Lear by the Shelleys in their travels in the very landscape in the Secret Memoirs on Mary Shelley?

The puzzling question of Shakespeare has always redounded to idea that one man of ultimate genius created that incredible oeuvre of work of vast understanding of the wider world and laser grasp of the human heart and behavior. Whether candidate for authorship be the man from Stratford, DeVere or others, to dismiss the fact of the breadth of Shakespeare’s work as “I imagined it all”, seems at best a hopeful, yet hopelessly hollow, belief in miracles. And then to set it all aside in later life to retire with never a look back, beyond a casual visit with an old theater pal, entirely unsatisfying.

Mary Shelley didn’t just imagine a monster from a waking dream. She took the sum of experiences from her youthful life, her many travels and the complex people she knew and lived with and formed them with some research into one rich and imaginative enduring work. Mark Twain wrote often and the best from his experiences growing up on the Mississippi River in frontier Missouri.

Shakespearian scholars point to historic events which they site to attempt to place the date of his 37 or so credited plays. They count on public notices at the time which seem to indicate an upstart playwright, but relating as much to an actor, but almost no identifiable element that can point to an author’s inspiration or interest from the life of a provincial glove maker’s son who found his way to London, while swaths of elements in the plays and characters can be tied to the lives and experiences lived by others. Maybe Shakespeare was a really good listener and someone offered him visiting privileges to their private library, but to accept that all the Shakespearian canonical lore is true, requires an even broader imagination.

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Lord Ruthven: John Polidori, Lord Byron and the Vampyre

John PolidoriWas the vampire invented in English literature from #metoo sexual abuse? Or maybe the trees?

The famous oft-told story of Mary Shelley’s invention of Frankenstein, from the introduction of the 1931 edition, credits the introduction of the vampire in English literature to John Polidori, in his story of The Vampyre. But was the source and invention of a vampire character as a nobleman who drains his victims of life from Polidori, or should the credit go to Lord Byron himself?

It has long been suggested in the literary world that Polidori based the main character of Lord Ruthven in his story on his complicated, but brief, relationship with Byron, hinting at an unsatisfied sexual relationship between them and Byron’s lordly dismissive treatment of Polidori. The introduction to Frankenstein says that Byron’s contribution to the famous competition between himself, Mary Godwin, Percy Shelley and Polidori at  Lake Geneva to each write a Gothic scare tale was a fragment of a story later appended to his Maseppa (by publisher John Murray without Byron’s permission), while Polidori struggled with a lame story about a voyeuristic peeping tom spying on a lady ghost through a keyhole, but then somehow miraculously came up with the rich and haunting, The Vampyre. It was a tale of a young man traveling with an older man who dies and mysteriously reappears again, while those they encounter die, drained of life. In the fragment of Byron’s story, called either simply “The Fragment” or “the Burial”, the main character is named Augustus Darvell. In Polidori’s version he is Lord Ruthven.

John Polidori, a few years following that summer in Geneva, committed suicide, possibly in some part a result of the dispute over credit for The Vampyre and a general despondency over the trajectory of his life. He drank cyanide in August of 1821. At least, that’s the generally accepted explanation of his early death, though the verdict of an inquest only stated the cause as “Died by the visitation of God”, with a glass of water by his bedside.

When The Vampyre was first published, the writing was attributed to Lord Byron and Polidori was dismissed. Was this entirely due to a prejudice from Byron’s fame? Or was there something in the story that indicated to those familiar with him that the story was actually from Byron? Let us give credit to John Polidori for writing the first published vampire tale, which surely inspired Bram Stoker’s later more famous vampire, but how much of it was Byron and where did it really come from?

The story was first published on April 1, 1819 (April Fool’s Day) by Henry Colburn in the New Monthly Magazine with the authorship as “A Tale by Lord Byron”. Polidori complained at the attribution, and Byron himself insisted that he was not the author. Polidori acknowledged that some elements of the story came from Byron, but insisted that the form and writing of it was his.

Was the credit given at first to Lord Byron deliberate by Henry Colburn? Polidori, in a letter to the publisher the day after the story’s appearance with Byron credited, claimed that the story had been sent to the publisher by a third party, a “lady”, and fellow traveler, presumably meaning Mary Godwin. Did the communication confuse or miss-identify the authorship? Perhaps in referencing that the story elements were originated by Bryon, Colburn assumed that the credit should be his. Or did the publisher just blithely believe the notorious famous name would attract more readers? When Polidori ultimately tried to settle with the publisher, rather than the £300 expected for a Lord Bryon piece, he was offered £30.

Perhaps Colburn believed the story was indeed by Bryon because of the character of Lord Ruthven. Colburn had previously published Lady Caroline Lamb’s novel of Glenarvon with a character also named Lord Ruthven, which was undoubtedly a thinly-clothed Byron, as a bit of revenge from their notorious liaison.

Colburn had previously published Lady Caroline Lamb’s novel of Glenarvon with a character also named Lord Ruthven, which was undoubtedly a thinly-clothed Byron, as a bit of revenge from their notorious liaison.

Why would Polidori name his character the same as Lady Lamb? Would he deliberately intend to poke Byron in the eye, and in the process doom himself to obscurity? Did he think it would sensationalize the story and thereby garner more attention? When Byron discovered his own fragment of a story published without his permission, he complained bitterly to John Murray at its revelation. Murray later would notoriously burn Byron’s autobiographical diaries as being too salacious. Would we have found there the answer to why he would begin a story, but so quickly abandon it, allowing Polidori to pick it up and run with it? We may never know directly from the Lord poet himself.

Who was Lord Ruthven? This mysterious noble who drains his young companions of their vitality is said in many scholarly references to be inspired by Lord Byron himself, but is someone else really the inspiration?

Henry Edward Yelverton was a British peer and the 19th Baron Grey de Ruthyn. The title of Baron Grey de Ruthyn belonged to the Earl of Kent until it passed to the Earl of Sussex in 1717. The 18th Baron, the 3rd Earl of Sussex died in 1799 with no male heirs. The Grey de Ruthyn title then passed to a 19-year-old Henry, son of the Earl’s daughter, Lady Barbara Yelverton and her husband, Edward Gould. Henry took his mother’s name and the Grey de Ruthyn barony, but could not inherit the title of Earl of Sussex through his mother.

The Yelverton family was from Nottinghamshire and Henry, on inheriting his birthright, leased the estate of Newstead Abbey through Byron’s mother while Byron was at school at Harrow. On visits to the family estate with its resident tenant, at sixteen, Byron formed a friendship with the Lord Ruthyn (called formally Lord Grey with the Ruthyn left more obscure) in his twenties, and enjoyed hunting on the estate, but soon came a sudden and severe break between them, and with it a dark secret.

Lord Grey de Ruthyn and Newstead Abbey

The Newstead Abbey estate was leased to “Lord Grey” beginning in January 1803 until the young Byron was to come of age. In the summer of that first year, Byron stayed at the estate he’d inherited while Yelverton was traveling abroad. When Yelverton returned, Byron stayed on and didn’t return to Harrow for the fall term. He and Yelverton spent days and nights on “shooting expeditions”. Then, without explanation, the young Byron suddenly broke off their friendship and left Newstead Abbey. The reason for the break was so severe and drenched with bitterness that Byron wouldn’t reveal it even to his confidante, his half-sister, Augusta Leigh.

He wrote to her, “I am not reconciled to Lord Grey, and I never will. He was once my Greatest Friend, my reasons for ceasing that Friendship are such as I cannot explain, not even to you, my Dear Sister, (although were they to be made known to anybody, you would be the first) but they will ever remain hidden in my own breast.”

Byron’s mother, Catherine Gordon, widowed and perhaps thinking of a titled re-marriage herself, was intent on making a reconciliation between them, but Byron wrote again to his half-sister complaining about his already difficult relations with his mother, “all our disputes have been lately heightened by my one with that object of my cordial, deliberate detestation, Lord Grey de Ruthyn.” Byron’s later apologetic letters to Grey and Grey’s inability to understand his young friend’s breaking-off of their relationship it has been suggested might point to a sexual relationship encounter that Byron later regretted. They were never reconciled and in April 1808, Lord Grey left Newstead at the end of his lease.

A year later, in June of 1809, when Yelverton married an Anna Maria Kelham of Warwick, Byron wrote from Europe to his mother: “So Lord G— is married to a rustic. Well done! If I wed, I will bring home a Sultana, with half a dozen cities for a dowry, and reconcile you to an Ottoman daughter-in-law, with a bushel of pearls not larger than ostrich eggs, or smaller than walnuts.” The resentment was deep and long lasting.

Was Henry Yelverton the inspiration for Lord Ruthven? There was an actual Lord Ruthven from Wales, but he had no connection at all to any of the participants in this mystery. Why would Lady Caroline Lamb and John Polodori both name their character for a real person they didn’t know if they were intending on a thinly disguised literary rebuke to someone they both knew and had been left bitter. One might imagine that the dig was a double stroke. Bryon’s bitterness over whatever happened to sour him on Yelverton, was perhaps something he carried with him deeply, and in intimate relations with others he would complain about the older Lord who had taken advantage of him, and the naming of the vampire character who sucks the life out of people a joke by Bryon, known by Henry Colburn, and those of his circle, a secret so unmentionable it dare not be spoken. Henry Yelverton, Lord Grey de Ruthyn died in 1810, dead for six years by the summer of 1816, so he could not complain of slander as a fictional vampire in a fantastical story if he was framed as Lord Ruthven, so fair game.

Byron was at this very same time romantically infatuated with a series of girls in his boyhood days. His cousin Mary Chaworth, whom he spent many hours at the nearby Annesley Hall, who was the “beau ideal”  of womenhood in his youthful fancy, that he would later say he found “anything but angelic”  when she rejected him as “that lame boy”. His encounters with women left him disillusioned but romantic. Could his behaviors with men though his future life be the result of a molestation in his youth by a trusted friend? The answers, like so many interpretations of the lives of the romantics may need be divined between the lines.

Or could it have been the trees?

Visitors to Newstead Abbey up until the 1970s could have noted and remarked on the massive tree stumps which lined the drives. The stumps were obviously of great oaks cut almost to the ground. The guides of the time would tell that the trees were cut down by Byron’s tenant while he was away and sold for lumber. The stumps are long gone now, though visible in some aerial photographs of the estate and on old map diagrams. But the current caretakers, when asked, have no knowledge of them.

Did Yelverton, while renting the estate inherited by Byron have his trees cut down and sold, which Byron discovered on his return from a trip away? Or was this a later tenant? This is not entirely clear and the trees themselves have been removed from history like a vague memory. Would the joke on Byron be that he was so upset over trees? But why would this be a secret he wouldn’t reveal. If it was of a sexual nature, he wasn’t so reticent to mention these things to Murray and Hobhouse and others, so why so secret with Yelverton?

Is the first vampire in English literature about a young man being taken advantage by an older one, or is it a cosmic joke on the private rantings of the poetic Lord of Childe Harold over some intensely silly (to others) slight?

Favorite Castles of England and Wales

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Goethe and Frankenstein: Or, The Devil and the Dream

Goethe and FrankensteinHere’s an exchange from The Secret Memoirs of Mary Shelley when Mary, Percy and Claire are unexpectedly entertained in Switzerland from a local academic who has read Percy Shelley’s St. Irvyne, addressing him under the mistaken name from his pseudonymous “A Gentleman from Oxford” author identity.

“Monsieur Oxford, in your book—an outcast from society wanders in the Alps Mountains hoping for death. This is Wolfstein,” he began, giving the abstract and the main character’s name to the author as if he might have forgotten it. “He encounters an alchemist, the Rosicrucian, who promises him the elixir of life if his magic can raise the corpse of his dead lover, Magalena, from her tomb. But to do this, he must denounce his faith and deny his creator. They are struck by lightning and they are destroyed.”

The familiar story of the creation of the Frankenstein novel is a fireside reading of a book of Gothic tales and a nightmare dream on the lakeside of Geneva one summer. But the formation of the ideas of Mary Godwin’s book arose from her exposure to many influences, of Shelley, a collection of literary minds in the circle of her father’s acquaintances, and her readings, assembling the themes and events of her story from as many parts as her fictional creature.

But what role did Johann Goethe play in the writing of Frankenstein? And his friend, Friedrich Schiller?

When Victor Frankenstein encounters his creature who has been wandering and hiding in the Alps above Geneva, his unwanted creation tells of his education, how he read “The Sorrows of Werter”, “Plutarchs Lives” and “Paradise Lost”, books he found in a dropped leather satchel. It is from Werter, he learns the human need for love and connection, which so angers him with Victor for denying him, it drives him to murder and revenge.

Sorrows of Young Werther Johann Goethe

Today, Goethe is more familiarly known for his play of “Faust”, the doctor who trades his soul for a deal with the devil, but Johann Goethe’s early masterwork “The Sorrows of Young Werther”, the semi-autobiographical tale of a young student so obsessed with a love he cannot have that he commits suicide, was the “Catcher in the Rye” or “Hunger Games” of its day in the late 18th Century, a popular story that reached out to the young, so melancholy that it was blamed for a wave of suicides. The creature in Frankenstein expresses the profound effect the story had on him, which is the author’s expression of the effect it had on her, so much that in it can be found her own inspirations.

“I thought Werter himself a more divine being than I had ever beheld or imagined; his character contained no pretension, but it sank deep. The disquisitions upon death and suicide were calculated to fill me with wonder…”

But the reading of his book was not Mary Godwin’s only connection to Goethe. At the time of her formations of ideas that would permeate her novel, the German classicism was infusing the English literature world, inspiring the romantics of her world. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a regular of the literary society of her father, William Godwin, and a familiar acquaintance of Mary and Shelley, had been one of the founding sources of this.

Coleridge had learned German on a trip to Germany in his younger days, along with his friend William Wordsworth. Coleridge had encamped for a few months at Gottingen University, where he learned the language and listened to lectures and made side trips. He utilized this on his return to England to launch his literary career by translating to English his version of Friedrich Schiller’s “Wallenstein”.

And though he did not translate Schiller’s play of “Wilhelm Tell” he translated a poem “Tell’s Birthplace”. Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Godwin had been so influenced by the story of Wilhelm Tell it had inspired their elopement trip to Switzerland in 1814, to the beauty of the Lake Uri locations of Schiller’s story, where they had hoped to live away from the clucking tongues of English society, until they ran out of money. Shelley had even expected his wife and son might come and live with them in an egalitarian communal paradise.

Schiller was not Coleridge’s only influence on Mary and Percy. About the time of their elopement escape, Coleridge had been approached by publisher John Murray II to produce a translation of Goethe’s Faust. Coleridge was struggling with his own particular demons at the time, his long addiction to Laudanum, and his doubts about his own work with a tendency to begin brilliant works and never quite finish them, like Kubla Kahn, even going so far as to add: Or, a Vision in a Dream, A Fragment to the title, after Byron and friends convinced him publish it.

Coleridge would surely have been well acquainted with the literary circle of Darmstadt, the German Romantic movement “Circle of the Senses”, much like the literary circles of the English publishing world of John Murray, and of Madame DeStael at her Chateau Coppet in Geneva, visited by Bryon and Shelley in their travels around the lake.

The Darmstadt Circle was organized around the literary lights of Johann Merck, Gottfried Herder, and Christoph Wieland. The German authors had been translating works of Shakespeare and Cervantes into their language, as Coleridge had been the German works to English. Goethe, born in Frankfurt had served briefly as a magazine editor in nearby Darmstadt with Merck, before trying to revitalize his legal career in Wetzler, where he was inspired by the suicide of a friend and his own passionate attraction to an unattainable girl to write Young Werther.

Had Coleridge heard of the story of the strange activities of the one-time inhabitant of the Frankenstein Castle at Darmstadt, the college lecturer-alchemist and occult dabbler, Johann Conrad Dippel, from his travels in Germany? Coleridge may have readily been introduced to Dippel’s Oil, a malodorous concoction made from distilled animal parts, claimed as a universal medicine (meant to be rubbed on and not swallowed.) But by Coleridge’s time in Gottingen, the medicinal qualities of the Dippel’s Animal Oil had been largely dismissed and perhaps turned into somewhat of a joke after his chemical formulas had found a use in cloth dies. Mostly now only known for his tangential relation to the Frankenstein Castle, Dippel had written almost seventy works about his chemistry in German by the time of Coleridge’s studies at Gottingen.

Coleridge never published his English version of Faust in his lifetime and only later has what is believed may be his unfinished work been discovered. Mary Godwin also began a book before Frankenstein that she never finished, she called Hate, and what secrets of her sixteen year old heart it held may never be known. But why would she chose a German name for her French speaking Genevan characters of: Frankenstein: Or, The Modern Prometheus? Not only were they French Swiss, but Victor Frankenstein’s father was Italian. Confusing?

Wallenstein, Wolfstein, Frankenstein, and some smelly creepy medicine for a pregnant young woman author, expressing her exposure to the lofty thoughts and influences of the circle of contemplative minds surrounding her. Constantly pressed for an explanation of where she got the idea for her story, if a vision in a dream worked for Coleridge to explain Kubla Khan, why not for Frankenstein?

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Frankenstein Fraud! Victor Frankenstein College Dropout

“So, Mr. Frankenstein, you say you’re a doctor and that you have created life from dead tissue, by some mysterious means which you don’t support in any substantive way. Might we see your curriculum vitae?”

frankenstein_illustration2018 marks 200 years since the publishing of “Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus” by Mary Shelley, and countless versions and adaptations ever since. In many of these, or references to the story, the monster is often called Frankenstein and the main character, Victor Frankenstein, is often referred to as “Dr. Frankenstein”. But after creating his creature, which in the novel he never named, Victor Frankenstein left his studies at Ingolstadt University and returned home to Geneva on the tragic news of his younger brother’s death.

His field of study at Ingolstadt was at first, Natural Philosophy, an Enlightenment precursor to today’s natural sciences, but combining mathematics and chemistry with his own interests in the ancient alchemist notions of Cornelius Agrippa and Paracelsus, all of which he abandoned on the horror of his creation, missing his examinations to hurry home.

Victor Frankenstein was essentially a college dropout, so to call himself a doctor would have been fraudulent. He certainly never practiced medicine following the events at Ingolstadt. But he was perhaps distracted by other events. He came from a moneyed upper middle-class family, so presumably had no need to practice a trade. He did not establish any practice, nor teach at any institution. If he were to apply for a doctorate, I’m not sure how his interview might go…

“So, Mr. Frankenstein, you say you have discovered the secrets to life and death where others have failed, but you claim your notes were stolen by a monster, which you had sewn together from dead bodies, and kept in your university dormitory apartment bedroom for two years? Perhaps it is a means of refrigeration you have discovered?”

Frankenstein might suggest at this point that he’s working on it. He’s, of course, been thinking of other possible uses for electricity beyond bringing the dead back to life, but hasn’t had the time to develop his thoughts as he’s been preoccupied with some murders in his family.

The interview takes an incredulous turn at this point. “From your dissertation, you say this “demon” being you animated learned to read Plutarch and Goethe, in French, and discuss complex human cultural philosophy solely by observing a mountain farm family though the window of a barn, sustaining himself by eating nuts and berries he gathered in the woods? And no-one but you spoke to this eight foot tall individual of horrific visage, except one old blind man. And you didn’t finish your studies because this unseen horror murdered your little brother…and framed the crime on the housemaid?”

Frankenstein might apologetically have responded that he felt some personal responsibility in not stepping forward at the time, and telling the authorities they should be looking for an eight foot tall man who could run like a gazelle, with well-proportioned arms and sallow, watery, yellow eyes. He might further explain that this man he had once thought beautiful, and meticulously cared for and groomed for two years, turned on him from jealousy when he was rejected, blaming Victor for not loving him, and demanding he make a girlfriend for him who would understand him and love him for who he was, in spite of his flaws, and not the perfect being Victor had unrealistically envisioned when they started together.

Some of Victor Frankenstein’s life was most certainly based on Percy Shelley’s, if not intentionally, by familiarity. Shelley was a college dropout. He went to Oxford, but was asked to leave after anonymously publishing a scandalous tract on atheism authored together with his friend, Thomas Jefferson Hogg. Shelley and Mary lived on Percy Shelley’s family fortune estate income, though Shelley was in conflict with his father over his share and they struggled through thin years. Mary herself never attended a formal school, though women’s education was a major theme of her mother’s writing. She was tutored at home as the daughter of a noted author and publisher, William Godwin, and she was a voracious reader for her education.

The reference to “Doctor Frankenstein” seems to come from the stage or film dramatizations of the story, where in dialogue, just calling him Frankenstein would get repetitive and “Mister Frankenstein” doesn’t seem to carry the weight of gravitas authority for such an important character. And even though his family had money and prominent position, he had no landed title, so Lord or Sir Frankenstein doesn’t work. Many of the later adaptations refer to him as Von Frankenstein, but in the novel he is not a noble and Frankenstein is not a land, just a family name.  He was the son of a local bourgeois government official in French speaking Switzerland, where it would have been “de  Frankenstein” if he was landed.

If the story of Victor Frankenstein’s miraculous creation of life from dead tissue had been verified and not have turned out so tragically, with his desperately following his murderous creation across a frozen north wasteland, he might have been given an honorarium title of doctor, or perhaps even have been knighted. But instead, perhaps the interview might conclude…

“Mr. Frankenstein, while we find your tale intriguing and colorfully inventive, we might suggest you take a long sea voyage and spend some time alone in the artic to gather your thoughts and perhaps submit a revised application, with more footnotes. And some references. Oh, your references have been murdered, too? Well…Hm.”

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Publisher of Frankenstein First Edition – Lackington

The Temple of the Muses where Frankenstein was first offered for sale.

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Temple of The Muses Book Emporium

On the cover page of the first printing of “Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus”, the publisher is listed as Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor and Jones of Finsbury Square. Percy Shelley’s correspondence regarding the publishing was usually addressed to Lackington & Allen & Co.. But who were they?

The original founder of the firm, James Lackington had passed away by the time of the publishing of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s novel. Lackington, who once advertised himself as the “Cheapest Bookseller in the World”, was an early proponent of the “book emporium” with the business philosophy of discount books sold in volume (sound familiar). A self-made man who rose from selling meat pies at the age of ten and an apprenticeship at a shoemaker, he went to London in 1773 to make his fortune, and began selling books as Lackington & Co. in 1774 from his circulating library on Chiswell Street in London. He focused on selling books to all classes of society.

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James Lackington

In 1791 Lackington had become so successful he built a great store and shopping mall on the corner of Finsbury Square he called the “Temple of the Muses”, designed by George Dance, the London city architect who also designed Newgate Prison and London’s Guildhall. The building housed a collection of publishers and assorted shops. An advertisement of the time reported that the bookseller had a half million volumes for sale at any one time and by 1803, the printed catalogue listed 800,000 works available. Its scale was demonstrated at its grand opened by a mail coach and four horses driving around underneath its central dome. It was called “the most extraordinary library in the world”.

lackington_coinIntended to represent a temple to reading, the poet John Keats recalled visiting the Temple of the Muses as a schoolboy to wonder at the towering shelves of books and read for free in the lounges, and eventually met his publishers among the stacks. In a clever bit of self-marketing, customers could pay for books with a token coin with Lackington’s portrait on one side and Greek classical goddess on the reverse.

A trusted employee, Robin Allen, who was said to be an “excellent judge of old books” had risen to partner and the firm was then known as Lackington, Allen & Co. for several years. James Lackington retired in 1798, the year Mary Godwin was born. George Lackington, a third cousin to James, who had worked in the shop as an apprentice since the age of 13, borrowed funds from his successful merchant father to buy a share in the company. Then, through a series of deaths or life misfortunes, the partners changed over the next years. Robin Allen died in 1815 and it took a succession of partners to replace him. Richard Hughes, Joseph Harding, A. Kirkman, and William Mavor, (the son of William Fordyce Mavor who invented shorthand stenography). George Lackington expanded from publishing to real estate and acquired the Egyptian Hall at Picadilly, which he rented out as an exhibition space, (it was torn down in 1905) while his partner, Richard Hughes was a lessor of Sadler’s Wells Theater.

James Lackington wrote an autobiography, or rather a “a biography written by himself”, where he revealed his secrets of bookselling, opined on authors publishing their own works, and on the improving state of knowledge and literature among ladies, which would seem to come into play as the philosophy which led to the publishing of Mary Shelley’s work. The Temple of the Muses at Finsbury Square burned down in 1841 and the business moved to a location on Pall Mall East as Harding and Lepard after George Lackington’s retirement.

“Frankenstein: Or the Modern Prometheus” was first offered to the public by Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor and & Jones on New Year’s Day of 1818. It was supposed to be published on December 30 of 1817, but the printing was late. The three volumes sold poorly, blamed on the late delivery and mix up in advertising. The novel was re-published officially on March 11, 1818.

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Frankenstein Published 200 Years Ago Today

200th Anniversary of a Literary Legend

Its first appearance was hardly a monster, though it still remains one of the most famous works of fiction ever published. “Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus” made its first appearance on the bookshelves of the Lackington Book Emporium on January 1, 1818. The book was published by the London firm of Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor and & Jones. The publishing house changed partners over time, so assorted names sometimes appear, but Lackington’s book emporium, “The Temple of the Muses” on Finsbury Square was London’s largest bookstore.

Five hundred copies had been printed and the book issue had been supported by advertisements in the London broadsheets. The first printing was in three volumes. It did not sell as hoped and was soon offered with a discount and much of the printing run remained unsold.

The name of the author did not appear on the cover, but rumor had it that it was by Percy Bysshe Shelley, though many in the literary community were aware or had suspicion that it was a work by his wife, Mary Shelley. The Shelleys’ friends had known that Mary was writing a book, but Shelley had asked them not to tell the publishers as he was submitting it for consideration.

A great deal has been made of the anonymous publishing of Frankenstein, but it was not at all uncommon at the time for books to be published anonymously. Most of Percy’s own early public works had been published without his name, though many knew who had authored them. Was it a fear of the reaction to a woman authoring such a dark and challenging work, or the fear of reputation, that prevented listing the author? The Shelleys had already been the subject of scandal for three and half years since their elopement in 1814. Perhaps it was the intention to wait for reaction to the book before stepping from behind the curtain, with the fear that critics would take the easy opportunity to attack the author rather than judge the work on its merits.

The book did not sell as hoped. Critical reaction was mixed. Mary Shelley had received no advance for the book, and was to receive a share of the profits after the deduction of expenses. There was a dispute with Lackington over the amount of advertising for the release. Shelley blamed the poor sales on the advertisements appearing too late to support the publication date. Lackington agreed to re-launch the book in three months, with sufficient time for the advertising. The relaunch would be on March 11, 1818, which was considered the official publication date, the day before Percy and Mary Shelley would leave England for Italy. Percy would never return.

The author’s name as Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley would not appear on the cover until 1823, on the single volume edition, published by G. and W. B. Whittaker. Mary’s authorship was well known by this time as the story had achieved a great notoriety, mostly through the story performed as an unauthorized stage play which was hugely popular. The first printed edition of the book to recognize Mary Shelley as the author would be on a French translation, as simply “Mme. Shelley” in 1821.

Critical Reception

Even without her name on it, it was no real secret that Mary Shelley was the author. Reviews appeared with reference to her. The Literary Panorama and National Register attacked the novel as a “feeble imitation of Mr. Godwin’s novels…produced by the daughter of a celebrated living novelist”. And perhaps as evidence to the feared reaction if Mary Shelley had been publicly named, another commented, “The writer of it is, we understand, a female; this is an aggravation of that which is the prevailing fault of the novel; but if our authoress can forget the gentleness of her sex, it is no reason why we should; and we shall therefore dismiss the novel without further comment.” Sir Walter Scott, who knew Percy Shelley and shared his usual publisher was kinder “upon the whole, the work impresses us with a high idea of the author’s original genius and happy power of expression”, though there is a suggestion that he was under the impression that Shelley was the author, while the Quarterly Review described it as “a tissue of horrible and disgusting absurdity”.

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