Frankenstein
Mary Shelley
Dec 1999 · Recorded Books · Narrated by George Guidall
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9 hr 45 min
Unabridged
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About this audiobook
On the deck of his ice-imprisoned ship, explorer Robert Walton watches from a great distance as an enormous apparition travels with much haste across the frozen shore. The next day, Walton fishes from the sea a melancholy scientist named Frankenstein, who shares with Walton the horrifying account of his life and of the "hideous progeny" he set loose upon the world. Frankenstein was written while 19-year-old Mary Shelley vacationed in Geneva with poets Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron. An incessantly rainy summer prompted Byron to challenge the members of the party to write a tale of the supernatural. While listening to a discussion concerning the theory of electrical reanimation, Mary Shelley was struck, almost to terror, with the idea for Frankenstein: "The idea so possessed my mind that a thrill of fear ran through me, and I wished to exchange the ghastly image of my fancy for the realities around ." A universal classic, Mary Shelley's romantic tale of an ambitious doctor who places himself in the dangerous role of God was first published anonymously in 1818. Master narrator George Guidall skillfully brings to life the doctor and his unhappy creation.
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About the author
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was born in England on August 30, 1797. Her parents were two celebrated liberal thinkers, William Godwin, a social philosopher, and Mary Wollstonecraft, a women's rights advocate. Eleven days after Mary's birth, her mother died of puerperal fever. Four motherless years later, Godwin married Mary Jane Clairmont, bringing her and her two children into the same household with Mary and her half-sister, Fanny. Mary's idolization of her father, his detached and rational treatment of their bond, and her step-mother's preference for her own children created a tense and awkward home. Mary's education and free-thinking were encouraged, so it should not surprise us today that at the age of sixteen she ran off with the brilliant, nineteen-year old and unhappily married Percy Bysshe Shelley. Shelley became her ideal, but their life together was a difficult one. Traumas plagued them: Shelley's wife and Mary's half-sister both committed suicide; Mary and Shelley wed shortly after he was widowed but social disapproval forced them from England; three of their children died in infancy or childhood; and while Shelley was an aristocrat and a genius, he was also moody and had little money. Mary conceived of her magnum opus, Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus, when she was only nineteen when Lord Byron suggested they tell ghost stories at a house party. The resulting book took over two years to write and can be seen as the brilliant creation of a powerful but tormented mind. The story of Frankenstein has endured nearly two centuries and countless variations because of its timeless exploration of the tension between our quest for knowledge and our thirst for good. Shelley drowned when Mary was only 24, leaving her with an infant and debts. She died from a brain tumor on February 1, 1851 at the age of 54.
George Guidall is one of the most prolific narrators of audiobooks in the world. He has recorded nearly 650 unabridged novels, everything from "Crime and Punishment" and "The Iliad" to "Snow Falling on Cedars." He began his career as an actor, appearing on Broadway and touring Europe with Helen Hayes in the "Glass Menagerie," " Miracle Worker" and "The Skin of Our Teeth." He received an Obie Award for Best Performance Off-Broadway, and has continued his performances in theater for over 40 years. Guidall has also appeared on television, with roles on the soap "One Life to Live" and "Law and Order," and in movies such as "Malcolm X" and "Tales from the Darkside." His first job reading audiobooks was for the Library of Congress' American Foundation for the Blinds' Talking Books. Since then he has won the most prestigious Audiobook Award, the Audie Award, for Best Unabridged Narration of a novel for his recording of John Irving's "A Widow for One Year." He won the Audie again in 2000 for Wally Lamb's "I Know This Much is True."
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