The Frankenstein of the Apple Crate

The Frankenstein of the Apple Crate (Julia Douthwaite Viglione) is a short story inspired by a true archival discovery written for grades 4-6 that imagines how Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin might have gotten the idea for Frankenstein as a young girl. The novella discovered by the young heroine of this book is a little-known work written and published in France by François-Félix Nogaret, "Le Miroir des événemens actuels" (1790), which includes an inventor-hero named Frankénsteïn who creates a life-size automaton. The fiction suggests that Wollstonecraft could have read this book during her time in France and that the copy she brought back to England perhaps inspired her timeless classic.