A NEW Dundee edition of Frankenstein celebrating author Mary Shelley's links to the city is to be given free to schoolchildren this year.
As reported in The National in April, Shelley lived in the city for two years.
Edited and introduced by Dr Daniel Cook, of the University of Dundee’s English department, the book will include the complete 1818 text of the science fiction novel as well as commissioned images produced by local comics artists.
READ MORE: Frankenstein & Dundee
Broadcaster Billy Kay, who is currently working on a BBC Scotland radio documentary exploring Mary Shelley’s Dundee, will provide the foreword.
“Frankenstein is one of the most influential novels ever written,” said Dr Cook. “It is studied in schools and universities across the English-speaking world, and everyone is in some way familiar with the story of the god-like scientist and his monstrous creation, through movies, caricatures or popular culture more generally.
“We are very excited to build on the existing scholarship around Mary Shelley’s time here and to bring out this special edition. By circulating free copies in print and online we hope even more people will be inspired by the novel, and connect it more firmly with the place where it all began for the young Shelley – Dundee in 1812.”
From age 14 to 16 Shelley lived in Dundee’s South Baffin Street after her father William Godwin sent her to live with the wealthy jute baron Baxter family. This time would profoundly influence Shelley, as she later acknowledged: “It was beneath the trees of the grounds belonging to our house, or on the bleak sides of the woodless mountains near, that my true compositions, the airy flights of my imagination, were born and fostered.”
The new edition of Frankenstein will be released online in a downloadable format while thousands of hard copies will be printed and given free to schoolchildren in Dundee and the surrounding areas.
The project is funded by the Art and Humanities Research Institute (AHRI) as part of the university’s ongoing involvement with the national Being Human Festival of the Humanities.
Since 2015, Dr Cook and a team of staff and students from across the university have partnered with local institutions to host a series of activities under Being Human, including a comic titled Frankenstein Begins.
A sequel to the comic, Frankenstein Returns, will also be launched to tie in with the publication of the new edition, which coincides with the 200th anniversary of the original novel.
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