Mary Shelley (1797-1851) was the daughter of the 18th-century feminist author Mary Wollstonecraft, who wrote Vindication of the Rights of Women. She married the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley.

Shelley began writing Frankenstein in 1816, when she was 19 years old, and the novel was first published in 1818. She revised the work when it was published again in 1831. Although the 1831 edition perhaps shows more stylistic maturity, some of the darker and more controversial elements were removed from the narrative. Purists often prefer the somewhat harder "edge" of the 1818 edition.

from
FRANKENSTEIN
or
THE MODERN PROMETHEUS
By the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs.

How can I describe my emotions at this catastrophe, or how delineate the wretch whom with such infinite pains and care I had endeavoured to form? His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful! - Great God! His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same colour as the dun white sockets in which they were set, his shrivelled complexion, and straight black lips.