Clarification: 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 Mary Wollstonecraft could have read this little book in France during her time there and brought back a copy to England. The girl who would later write the masterpiece "Frankenstein" (1818) could have found Nogaret's novella in the papers her mother left behind, and perhaps she was inspired by it to create her timeless classic.

Thank you!

Julia Douthwaite Viglione *90
Seattle, Wash.