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Articles on Mary Shelley

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An etching of a Royal Institution lecture by James Gillray (1802). Davy is on the right, holding the bellows. Science History Images/Alamy Stock Photo

Why thousands of volunteers are transcribing the notebooks of the scientist who inspired Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

Davy’s famous lectures on the animating power of electricity may have inspired a young Mary Shelley as she came up with the idea for Frankenstein.
A military guard of honour wear face masks against the spread of the coronavirus by the Unknown Soldier’s Tomb in Warsaw, Poland. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski)

Poetry has linked war and disease for centuries

From cholera outbreaks to public health actions, war metaphors have long been used to describe diseases, to show what we fear and to explain our world to ourselves.
Frankenstein’s monster in the Hollywood Wax Museum. The fictional character first appeared in Mary Shelley’s novel in 1818. www.shutterstock.com

What Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein teaches us about the need for mothers

By showing us a world from which mothers are largely absent, Mary Shelley reminds us that the genius of motherhood lies less in biological reproduction than in the capacity to love.

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