Frankenstein佛蘭肯斯坦(1818年版-英文)（簡體書）

Mary Shelley inherited fame and even notoriety. She was the baby born on 30 August 1797 to the leading English theorist of the French Revolution， William Godwin， and to his wife Mary Wollstonecraft， after their marriage on 29 March 1797. Though strongly attached to one another， the couple were both embarrassed by Wollstonecraft's pregnancy. Godwin had made a celebrated attack on marriage as an institution in the closing secuon of his great work Political]ustice， 1793. Wollstonecraft in Vindica，twn of the Rights of Woman （1792） had accepted its necessity for women. But she by now had a 3-year-old daughter， Fanny， by the American trader Gilbert Imlay， and the marriage to Godwin showed everyone who had met her as 'Mrs Imlay' thar she had not in fact married him. Wollsronecraft died on io September 1797 from complications following the birth of this second daughter， Mary. The story of her life， loves and death was revealed by Godwin the following year， in the frank， touching Memoir he issued with his wife's Posthumous Works.
After the scandal this publication aroused， the resoundingly named Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin and her elder halfsister Fanny Imlay were persons of note. In 1801 Godwin married his neighbour， Maryjane Clairmont， who had two children of her own， Charles and Clara Jane Clairmont， and later bore Godwin a son， William. From 1807 a new family home in Skinner Street， Holborn， also served as r.he offices of a struggling publishing business in the name of M.J. Godwin. Though energetic in business and in Godwin's view a good wife， the remperamental Maryjane Clairmont had uneven relationships with her stepdaughters， and seems to have been jealous of the clever Mary， her rival for Godwin's attenuon. Godwin's pardy autobiographical mature novels， all narrated in the first person， suggest a merciless self-analyst， a secular product of the profoundly inward Puritan tradition. On the page he showed remarkable psychological insight； but， like his protagonists Fleetwood （1805） and especially Mandeville （1817）， he seems to have been awkward in relationships and conversation. Mary then grew up in conditions of some emotional deprivation， and shared her father's inhibitions.

FRANKENSTEIN;

OR,THE MODERN PROMETHEUS.

VOLUME I

LETTER I

To Mrs SAVILLE,England.

St Petersburgh,Dec.11th,17-.

You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings. I arrived here yesterday; and my first task is to assure my dear sister of my welfare, and increasing confidence in the success of my undertaking.

I am already far north of London; and as I walk in the streets of Petersburgh, I feel a cold northern breeze play upon my cheeks, which braces my nerves, and fills me with delight. Do you understand this feeling? This breeze, which has travelled from the regions towards which I am advancing, gives me a foretaste of those icy climes. Inspirited by this wind of promise, my day dreams become more fervent and vivid. I try in vain to be persuaded that the pole is the seat of frost and desolation; it ever presents itself to my imagination as the region of beauty and delight. There, Margaret, the sun is for ever visible; its broad disk just skirting the horizon, and diffusing a perpetual splendour. There—for with your leave, my sister, I will put some trust in preceding navigators—there snow and frost are banished; and, sailing over a calm sea,we may be wafted to a land surpassing in wonders and in beauty every region hitherto discovered on the habitable globe. Its productions and features may be without example, as the phanomena of the heavenly bodies undoubtedly are in those undiscovered solitudes. What may not be expected in a country of eternal light? I may there discover the wondrous power which aturacts the ncedle; and may regulate a thousand celestial observations, that require only this voyage to render their seeming eccentricities consistent for ever. I shall satiate my ardent curiosity with the sight of a part of the world never before visited, and may tread a land never before imprinted by the foot of man. These are my enticements, and they are sufficient to conquer all fear of danger or death, and to induce me to commcnce this laborious voyage with the joy a child feels when he embarks in a little boat, with his holiday mates, on an expedition of discovery up his native river. But, supposing all these conjectures to be false, you cannot contest the inestimable benefit which I shall confer on all mankind to the last generation, by discovering a passage near the pole to those countries, to reach which at present so many months are requisite; or by ascertaining the secret of the magnet, which, if at all possible, can only be effected by an undertaking such as mine.

These reflections have dispelled the agitation with which I began my letter, and I feel my heart glow with an enthusiasm which elevates me to heaven; for nothing contributes so much to tranquillize the mind as a steady purpose, —a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye. This expedition has been the favourite dream of my early years. I have read with ardour the accounts of the various voyages which have been made in the prospect of arriving at the North Pacific Ocean through the seas which surround the pole. You may remember, that a history of all the voyages made for purposes of discovery composed the whole of our good uncle Thomas's library. My education was neglected, yet I was passionately fond of reading. These volumes were my study day and night, and my familiarity with them increased that regret which I had felt, as a child, on learning that my father's dying injunction had forbidden my uncle to allow me to embark in a seafaring life.

These visions faded when I perused, for the first time, those poets whose effusions entranced my soul, and lifted it to heaven. I also became a poet, and for one year lived in a Paradise of my own creation; I imagined that I also might obtain a niche in the temple where the names of Homer and Shakespeare are consecrated. You are well acquainted with my failure, and how heavily I bore the disappointment. But just at that time I inherited the fortune of my cousin, and my thoughts were turned into the channel of their earlier bent.