Frankenstein in Oxford

Here is an event that passed me by unfortunately -- Frankenstein Day at the Bodleian Library on 7 October 2008. The occasion was the launch of Charles E. Robinson's new edition -- or restoration rather -- of Mary Shelley's novel as The Original Frankenstein, removing Percy Shelley's approximately 5000 changes that he made in the manuscript. For the occasion, the library also created a display of the draft notebooks (in Mary and Percy’s Shelley’s handwriting) and the fair copy that was sent to the publisher. It is interesting to note the difference between the announcement on the Oxford Media pages and its complement on the Bodleian library pages. The difference has something to do, I think, with the aims of the edition. In trying to reach a wider audience, The Original Frankenstein is a purification of sorts, worthy in its own right, but slighly suspect as well. (And not only if you adhere to D. F. McKenzie's "sociology of the text".) The edition, we are told, "allow[s] us for the first time to read the story in Mary’s original hand" -- for the first time, that is, if we forget Professor Robinson's facsimile edition (and transcription) of The Frankenstein Notebooks in the Manuscripts of the Younger Romantics Series. Incidentally, neither the drafts nor the fair copy survive in toto, so no restoration can be entirely pure. On the plus side, The Original Frankenstein does print both texts (the "original" reconstruction and the original as published), while the book "is part of the Library's continuing campaign to make its riches more accessible for study and enjoyment".