Contemporary perspectives of the text are provided in two sections: Contexts helps place the novel in relation to the mind of its creator through writings by Mary Shelley, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron, and John William Polidori; Nineteenth-Century Responses collects six reactions to the book from the years 1818 to 1886.Criticism brings together twelve seminal essays. The emphasis is on range—both critical (psychoanalytic, mythic, new historicist, and feminist essays are included) and chronological (essays span the last thirty years). Christopher Small, George Lebine, Ellen Moers, Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, Barbara Johnson, Mary Poovey, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, William Veeder, Anne K. Mellor, Susan Winnett, Marilyn Butler, and Lawrence Lipking provide diverse perspectives.A Chronology and Selected Bibliography are also included. J. Paul Hunter is Barbara E. and Richard J. Franke Professor Emeritus at the University of Chicago. He is the author of The Reluctant Pilgrim: Defoe’s Emblematic Method and Quest for Form in Robinson Crusoe ; Occasional Form: Henry Fielding and the Chains of Circumstance ; and Before Novels: The Cultural Contexts of Eighteenth-Century English Fiction . He is author of the first nine editions of The Norton Introduction to Poetry and the long-time co-editor of The Norton Introduction to Literature and New Worlds of Literature . Comprehensive study of the book Frankenstein Presents the full original 1818 text Presents various contexts by the author and others of the day Presents 19th century responses and with exerpts from magazines Presents modern day criticism and author chronological biography