Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
Modern World Literatures
Royal Institution Lectures, 1801
Quarterly Review, 18 (1818): 457-8,
on Arctic exploration:
“[Such] expeditions may fail in the main object
of the arduous enterprise; but they can
scarcely fail in being the means of extending
the sphere of human knowledge ...
‘Knowledge is power’; and we may safely
commit to the stream of time the beneficial
results of its irresistible influence.”
Marilyn Butler, “Introduction,” Frankenstein:
The 1818 Text (Oxford, 1994), p. xxxv, on the
character of Walton:
“[The 1818 text] portrays him as a shallow
young egotist who complains continuously to
the patient sister he has left behind, and all
along risks the lives of the family men which
make up his crew.”
Lawrence-Abernethy controversy:
“The motion proper to living bodies, or in one
word, life, has its origin in that of its parents.”
(Lawrence, An Introduction to Comparative
Anatomy, 1816, pp. 140-2)
Edmund Burke, Reflections on the
Revolution in France (1790)
“To squander away the objects which made the happiness of
their fellows, would be to them no sacrifice at all. Turbulent,
discontented men of quality, in proportion as they are puffed up
with personal pride and arrogance, generally despise their own
order. One of the first symptoms they discover of a selfish and
mischievous ambition, is a profligate disregard of a dignity which
they partake with others. To be attached to the subdivision, to
love the little platoon we belong to in society, is the first
principle (the germ as it were) of public affections. It is the first
link in the series by which we proceed towards a love to our
country, and to mankind. The interest of that portion of social
arrangement is a trust in the hands of all those who compose it;
and as none but bad men would justify it in abuse, none but
traitors would barter it away for their own personal advantage.”
Mary Gaskell, Mary Barton (1848)
“The actions of the uneducated seem to me typified
in those of Frankenstein, that monster of many
human qualities, ungifted with a soul, a knowledge
of the difference between good and evil. The
people rise up to life; they irritate us, they terrify
us, and we become their enemies. Then in the
sorrowful moment of our triumphant power, their
eyes gaze on us with mute reproach. Why have we
made them what they are; a powerful monster, yet
without the inner means for peace and happiness.”
Mary Shelley, letter to P. B. Shelley, on William
Cobbett, author of Rural Rides (1830)
‘[A] revolution in this country would not be
bloodless if that man has any power in it ... He
encourages in the multitude the worst possible
human passion revenge or as he would probably
give it that abominable Christian name
retribution’. (The Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft
Shelley, ed. B. T. Bennett [1980], I: 49)