108 Fun Facts About Frankenstein

What is the novel's subtitle?

The Modern Prometheus is the subtitle: in Greek myth Prometheus stole fire from the gods to give life to mankind, as Victor steals the secret of life.

In what year was Frankenstein first published?

Frankenstein was first published in 1818: the three-volume first edition appeared anonymously in London on 1 January of that year.

How old was the author when the novel was published?

Mary Shelley was 20 when Frankenstein was published; born 30 August 1797, she had begun the story at 18 during the summer of 1816.

In which English city was the author lodging when she wrote much of the book?

Bath: from September 1816 Mary lodged at 5 Abbey Churchyard and wrote much of the novel there, finishing it at Marlow in spring 1817.

Who suggested that the group at Villa Diodati each write a ghost story?

Lord Byron proposed the contest on a rainy June night in 1816 after the group read ghost stories aloud; Mary's entry grew into Frankenstein.

The gloomy summer of 1816 that kept the group indoors was caused by the eruption of which volcano?

Mount Tambora in Indonesia erupted in April 1815, the largest eruption in recorded history; its ash cooled 1816 into the Year Without a Summer.

Villa Diodati, where the story was conceived, overlooks which body of water?

Villa Diodati stands at Cologny on the shore of Lake Geneva; the poet hosting the party rented it for the summer of 1816.

Which book of German ghost stories, read aloud in French translation, entertained the group at the villa?

Fantasmagoriana, an 1812 French anthology of German ghost stories, was read aloud at the villa and prompted the ghost-story contest.

Which other landmark horror tale grew out of the same 1816 gathering?

The Vampyre, John Polidori's 1819 tale of the aristocratic Lord Ruthven, grew from his host's abandoned fragment and founded the romantic vampire genre.

Who wrote the preface to the anonymous first edition?

Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote the 1817 preface in the author's voice, which led many early readers to assume the anonymous novel was his.

How many copies were printed of the first edition?

Just 500 copies were printed, in three volumes, the standard 'triple-decker' format of the day, by a small London publisher.

The author's mother, who died days after her birth, was which pioneering feminist writer?

Mary Wollstonecraft, author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), died of septicaemia eleven days after giving birth to Mary.

The author's father, to whom the book is dedicated, was which philosopher and novelist?

William Godwin, author of Political Justice and the novel Caleb Williams, was Mary's father; the first edition carried a dedication to him.

At which university does the scientist study and build the Creature?

Victor studies at the University of Ingolstadt in Bavaria, where Professor Waldman's chemistry lectures set him on the path to the secret of life.

The Frankenstein family belongs to which city, where much of the novel takes place?

The Frankensteins are a distinguished family of Geneva; Victor opens his narrative 'I am by birth a Genevese', and the family house stands at Belrive on the lake.

Which epic poem does the Creature find and read, later comparing himself to its fallen angel?

Paradise Lost, Milton's epic, is among the books the Creature finds; he tells Victor, 'I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel.'

Where does the Creature confront his maker to tell his story and ask for a mate?

On the Mer de Glace, the glacier above Chamonix in the Mont Blanc massif, which Mary Shelley had herself visited in July 1816.

In the novel, where does the scientist build, then destroy, the female creature?

On one of the remotest of the Orkney Islands, in a two-room hut, Victor assembles the female before tearing the unfinished body apart.

Whom does the Creature kill on Victor's wedding night?

His bride Elizabeth is strangled in their room at the inn at Evian; the Creature had warned, 'I shall be with you on your wedding-night.'

Who is the ship's captain whose letters frame the whole novel?

Robert Walton, captain of a ship bound for the North Pole, writes the letters to his sister Margaret that frame the story; he pulls the dying Victor from the ice.

What does the Creature say he will do after his maker dies at the end of the novel?

He vows to burn himself on a pyre: 'I shall collect my funeral pile and consume to ashes this miserable frame', then vanishes onto the ice.

Which of these details of the Creature's creation comes from the 1931 film, not the novel?

A jolt of electricity is the film's invention: Shelley keeps the method vague, saying only that Victor 'infused a spark of being' after two years of work.

The 1831 revised edition changed Elizabeth from the scientist's cousin into what?

An orphan: in the 1831 text Elizabeth is a foundling, the daughter of a Milanese nobleman, adopted by the Frankensteins rather than born Victor's cousin.

Which famous novelist praised the book in Blackwood's as an 'extraordinary tale'?

Walter Scott, reviewing it in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, found 'uncommon powers of poetic imagination'; Mary wrote to thank him and correct his guess at the authorship.

The first stage adaptation, Presumption, was performed in London in which year?

Mary Shelley went to see it and wrote 'lo & behold! I found myself famous!'

Which sci-fi writer argued Frankenstein is the first true science-fiction story?

Brian Aldiss made the case in Billion Year Spree (1973): Victor 'makes a deliberate decision' and turns to laboratory experiment rather than magic.

Who directed the 1931 film Frankenstein?

James Whale, fresh from directing Journey's End, took over the project from Robert Florey in 1931 and went on to make Bride of Frankenstein.

Who played the Monster in the 1931 film?

Boris Karloff, then a little-known 43-year-old character actor, played the Monster; the opening credits billed the role only as '?'.

Which actor plays the scientist in the 1931 film?

Colin Clive plays the scientist, renamed Henry in the film; his friend Victor Moritz is John Boles and Edward Van Sloan is Dr Waldman.

Which studio produced the 1931 film?

Universal Pictures made it under Carl Laemmle Jr.; the profit from Dracula earlier in 1931 persuaded the studio to pursue more horror films.

What is the name of the hunchbacked assistant in the 1931 film?

Fritz, played by Dwight Frye, is the hunchbacked assistant who fetches the brain; Ygor only appeared in Son of Frankenstein (1939).

In the 1931 film, which of the two specimens does the assistant mistakenly bring back?

The criminal brain: startled by a noise, the assistant drops the jar labelled 'normal brain' and takes the one marked 'abnormal brain' from the lecture room.

What does the Monster do to little Maria at the lake in the 1931 film?

State censors cut the scene in 1931; it was rediscovered in a British archive in the 1980s.

Where is the Monster trapped when the mob sets it ablaze at the end of the 1931 film?

An old windmill: the mob torches it with the Monster inside; Bride of Frankenstein opens at the smouldering ruin, where he has survived in a flooded cellar.

Which actor was originally expected to play the Monster in the 1931 film?

Bela Lugosi was first announced for the Monster but balked at a speechless role under heavy makeup, reportedly saying he would not be 'a scarecrow over here'.

Who created the Monster's famous makeup in 1931?

Jack Pierce, the studio's makeup chief, devised the flat skull, neck electrodes and heavy eyelids, spending hours each day applying them to the actor.

Which line from the 1931 film ranks among AFI's greatest movie quotes?

'It's alive! It's alive!' came 49th on AFI's 2005 list of 100 movie quotes; the following 'Now I know what it feels like to be God' was cut by censors as blasphemous.

Which real inventor's apparatus was reportedly used in the 1931 film's laboratory effects?

Nikola Tesla: effects man Kenneth Strickfaden reportedly used a coil built by Tesla himself among the crackling machines that fans now call 'Strickfadens'.

Who plays the Bride in Bride of Frankenstein (1935)?

Elsa Lanchester plays the Bride and also Mary Shelley in the film's prologue; her Bride is on screen for only a few minutes at the end.

The Bride's famous hairstyle was modelled on which historical figure?

Nefertiti: the bust of the Egyptian queen inspired the tall shape, with the hair set in a Marcel wave over a wire frame to hold it.

The actress playing the Bride modelled her hissing on which animal?

Swans: the actress copied the hissing of the swans in London's Regent's Park, and gave herself a sore throat over the repeated takes.

What is the name of the scheming mentor who blackmails Henry into building the Bride?

Dr. Septimus Pretorius, played by Ernest Thesiger, shows Henry his tiny homunculi in jars and forces the collaboration by having the Monster kidnap Henry's wife.

How many words did the studio allow the Monster to speak in Bride of Frankenstein?

44 words: the Monster's vocabulary in the sequel was limited to 44 words, a choice the actor disliked, believing the character's power lay in being inarticulate.

Which Hammer star played Baron Frankenstein in six films beginning in 1957?

Peter Cushing played the Baron from The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) to Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell (1974); Christopher Lee was the Creature in the first.

Mel Brooks's Young Frankenstein (1974) was shot in what unusual way for its era?

Entirely in black and white, to mimic the 1930s originals; Brooks even reused Kenneth Strickfaden's 1931 laboratory equipment as props.

Who played the Creature in Kenneth Branagh's 1994 film Mary Shelley's Frankenstein?

Robert De Niro played the Creature opposite Branagh's Victor; he reportedly studied stroke patients to shape the Creature's halting speech.

Who plays the Creature in Guillermo del Toro's 2025 Frankenstein?

Jacob Elordi plays the Creature opposite Oscar Isaac's Victor Frankenstein in the 2025 Netflix film; he stepped in after Andrew Garfield left the role.

Which 1960s sitcom made Frankenstein's monster the father of a suburban family?

The Munsters (1964-66): Fred Gwynne's Herman Munster, a flat-headed, bolt-necked patriarch, lived with his family at 1313 Mockingbird Lane.

The author's husband Percy died in 1822 in what way?

He drowned when his boat sank: the Don Juan went down in a storm in the Gulf of Spezia in July 1822; Mary later kept his heart, wrapped in a page of Adonais.

Which novel did the author publish in 1826?

The Last Man (1826) imagines a plague wiping out humanity by the end of the 21st century, narrated by the sole survivor Lionel Verney.

Which Frankenstein family servant is hanged for a murder the Creature committed?

Justine Moritz, the family's servant, is convicted on the evidence of the locket found in her pocket and executed while Victor stays silent.

Which friend of Victor is murdered by the creature after the female companion is destroyed?

Henry Clerval, Victor's boyhood friend who had travelled with him to Britain, is found strangled on a beach, and Victor is jailed on suspicion of the murder.

Which Oxford institution bought Mary Shelley's Frankenstein manuscripts in 2004?

The Bodleian Library bought the Abinger papers in 2004; its 2008 volume The Original Frankenstein, edited by Charles E. Robinson, separates Mary's draft from her husband's additions.

Whose biographies, the Lives, are among the three books the Creature finds?

Plutarch's Lives, with Goethe's Sorrows of Werter and an English epic, are the three books the Creature finds in a portmanteau in the woods and teaches himself from.

Which small London publishing house issued the first edition of Frankenstein?

Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor & Jones, a firm better known for cheap reprints, took the novel after larger houses declined it and issued it in three volumes.

Which blind old man is the only person to receive the Creature kindly?

Old De Lacey, blind father of Felix and Agatha, listens to the Creature with sympathy until Felix returns and beats him out of the cottage.

In which country is Victor jailed on suspicion of murdering his friend?

Ireland: Victor's skiff drifts onto the Irish coast, where he is arrested for a murder committed the night before and spends months in jail with fever.

Which critic attacked the novel anonymously in the Quarterly Review while conceding its author's powers?

John Wilson Croker, the Quarterly's hatchet man, called it 'a tissue of horrible and disgusting absurdity' while granting the author 'powers, both of conception and language'.

Green on screen, the Creature's skin is which color in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, barely covering his muscles?

Yellow skin, lustrous black hair and pearly white teeth are how Victor describes his creation. Watery eyes and straight black lips complete a face he cannot bear to look at.

What is Victor Frankenstein's actual occupation when he brings the Creature to life in Mary Shelley's novel?

A university student is all he is: Victor enrolls at seventeen, and before long his progress astonishes the very masters who teach him.

Which actor alternated as Victor and the Creature with Jonny Lee Miller in Danny Boyle's 2011 stage Frankenstein?

Benedict Cumberbatch and Miller swapped parts from one performance to the next at London's National Theatre, then shared the Olivier Award for best actor.

Where does Victor Frankenstein build the Creature in Mary Shelley's novel, which has no castle laboratory?

His top-floor rooms, cut off from the other apartments by a gallery and a staircase, hold what Victor calls his 'workshop of filthy creation'.

In Mary Shelley's novel, what finally kills Victor Frankenstein during his pursuit of the Creature across the ice?

Sheer exhaustion ends Victor's life in a ship's cabin, with no final duel. The Creature arrives only afterwards and mourns over the body of the man who made him.

In which region is Victor Frankenstein hauled aboard an explorer's ship, where he recounts his whole story?

The Arctic frames the whole novel: the ship is bound for the North Pole when its crew spot a giant driving a dog sledge, then find Victor adrift on a slab of ice.

Which ability sets the Creature of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein apart from the Monster of the classic 1931 film?

Fluent speech is his great weapon: after months of eavesdropping on a family of cottagers, he is eloquent enough to plead his own case to his maker.

Which relic of her late husband did Frankenstein author Mary Shelley keep in her desk, folded inside one of his poems?

His heart, or what remained of it, came to light a year after her death, in a silk parcel folded into a page of his elegy Adonais.

How does the Creature kill all three of his direct victims in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, starting with a child?

Strangling is his signature: each of the three bodies is found with the dark print of fingers on the neck.

Which song-and-dance number do Gene Wilder's scientist and Peter Boyle's Monster perform on stage in Young Frankenstein?

Puttin' on the Ritz almost never happened: Mel Brooks thought a singing, dancing monster was too silly, and gave way only after Wilder argued for it.

In the Greek myth behind the subtitle of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, what is stolen from the gods for humankind?

Fire was the theft, and Zeus had the thief chained to a rock where an eagle tore out his liver every single day.

Which comedy duo ran into Frankenstein's Monster, Dracula and the Wolf Man in a 1948 horror spoof?

Abbott and Costello played baggage clerks who take delivery of two very strange crates. The Library of Congress chose the film for the National Film Registry in 2001.

Which actor plays Victor in Guillermo del Toro's 2025 film Frankenstein, opposite Mia Goth?

Oscar Isaac plays him as a baron and surgeon bent on making life from dead matter, with Charles Dance as the strict father who shaped him.

Which biblical figure does the Creature tell Victor Frankenstein he ought to be, rather than the fallen angel?

Adam came from his maker's hands happy and cared for, the Creature argues, while he was driven from joy without having done anything wrong.

In which month does Victor Frankenstein watch the Creature first open its eye, on a night he calls dreary?

November sets the scene, at one in the morning with rain on the panes. 'It was on a dreary night of November' were also the first words of the story that the author put on paper.

Which illness kills Caroline Frankenstein after she nurses a girl in her care back to health?

Scarlet fever leaves Caroline time for one last wish: on her deathbed she joins the hands of Victor and the girl, hoping the two will marry.

How does Frankenstein's Creature first discover what he looks like, after admiring the beauty of the cottagers?

In a pool of water he meets his own reflection and starts back, unable at first to believe that the face is his.

What does the Creature receive as thanks for pulling a girl out of a river in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein?

A gunshot wound is his reward: the girl's companion tears her from his arms and shoots, and the Creature spends weeks in the woods nursing a ball in his shoulder.

On what does the Creature leave the ship in the closing lines of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein?

A raft of ice carries him off after he springs from the cabin window, and the book ends with him 'lost in darkness and distance'.

In which lakeside town, the first stop on a honeymoon by boat, is Victor Frankenstein's bride killed?

Evian was meant to be a single night's rest. The couple land at eight in the evening, stroll on the shore and retire to an inn, where the Creature strikes that same night.

Which occult writer's works does the young Victor Frankenstein find at an inn, sparking his obsession with alchemy?

Cornelius Agrippa thrills the thirteen-year-old, kept indoors by bad weather at the baths near Thonon. His father glances at the title page and calls it 'sad trash', to no effect.

What does a teenage Victor Frankenstein watch a bolt of lightning utterly destroy outside his family's house?

An old oak tree is gone in one dazzling flash. Victor finds it next morning reduced to thin ribbons of wood, and the sight shakes his faith in the old alchemists.

Which chemistry professor wins Victor Frankenstein over to modern science with a lecture praising its 'miracles'?

M. Waldman has the sweetest voice Victor has ever heard, and after the lecture he shows the newcomer round his own laboratory and promises him the use of its machines.

Besides the dissecting room, which grim source supplies Victor Frankenstein with materials for the Creature?

The slaughter-house means animal remains went into the Creature too, and Victor admits that his own nature often turned with loathing from the work.

Why does Victor Frankenstein decide to build the Creature about eight feet tall in Mary Shelley's novel?

Small parts slowed his work, so Victor dropped his first plan for a being of normal size and simply scaled every piece up.

How does Victor Frankenstein say he meant the Creature's hand-picked features to look, before the result horrifies him?

Beautiful was the plan: the limbs were in proportion and every feature was chosen for its looks, yet the finished, breathing face fills him with disgust.

In the nightmare Victor Frankenstein has right after animating the Creature, whose corpse does he find in his arms?

His mother lies wrapped in a shroud with grave-worms crawling in its folds, and he wakes to find the Creature holding up the curtain of his bed.

Which stolen object does the Creature slip into a sleeping servant's dress to frame her in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein?

A miniature portrait had hung round the murdered boy's neck that evening. Found in the servant's pocket, it becomes the evidence that condemns her.

Which newcomer, called 'the Arabian', has language lessons that Frankenstein's eavesdropping Creature secretly shares?

Safie arrives unable to speak the cottagers' tongue, so every lesson she is given teaches the listener hidden next door as well. Within two months he follows most of what is said.

Which German author's tale of a lovesick young man is among three books Frankenstein's Creature finds in the woods?

Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther moves the Creature to tears at its hero's death, and he judges Werther 'a more divine being' than anyone he has ever seen.

Which poet's ballad of a cursed sailor does Frankenstein quote as Victor walks the streets, afraid to look behind him?

Coleridge's Ancient Mariner is credited by name, and it haunts the frame story too: the ship's captain promises to 'kill no albatross' on his voyage.

What does the Creature find in the pocket of clothes he took when he fled Victor Frankenstein, revealing his origins?

A laboratory journal records the four months before the creation in disgusted detail. The Creature keeps the pages and later produces them in front of their author.

Which Alpine peak, called 'supreme and magnificent', towers over the valley where a grieving Victor Frankenstein rides?

Mont Blanc rises above Chamounix, which Victor reaches on a hired mule, chosen as the surest-footed mount for the rugged roads.

Which science did Mary Shelley say had 'given token' that a corpse might be re-animated, inspiring Frankenstein?

Galvanism grew from Luigi Galvani's twitching frog legs. In 1803 his nephew made the body of an executed criminal twitch at a public demonstration in London.

Which young physician was the fourth writer in the 1816 ghost-story contest that produced Mary Shelley's Frankenstein?

John Polidori had been hired as a traveling doctor for the trip. His sister's later marriage made him, after his death, the uncle of Christina and Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

Which diet does Frankenstein's Creature say will sustain him and a mate, since he refuses to kill the lamb and the kid?

Acorns and berries are all he asks for. The pair would sleep on a bed of dried leaves, he adds, while the sun ripened their food.

Which Frankenstein is the only member of Victor's immediate family still living at the end of Mary Shelley's novel?

Ernest, the middle of three brothers, outlasts both his parents and both his brothers, yet Victor spares him only a passing 'yet lived'.

Which instrument does the blind old cottager play while Frankenstein's Creature listens, enchanted, from his hovel?

Guitar music strikes the hidden listener as sweeter than the voice of the thrush or the nightingale, and one mournful air moves the old man's daughter to tears.

Why does the Frankensteins' servant, condemned for murder, confess to a crime she never committed?

Her priest threatened her with excommunication and hell in her last moments, until she almost believed she was the monster he said she was.

Which stepsister of Mary Shelley joined the 1816 trip to Switzerland during which Frankenstein was conceived?

Claire Clairmont, just eight months younger than Mary, had also tagged along when the couple eloped to France two years earlier.

What does Victor Frankenstein do the moment his Creature comes to life in Mary Shelley's novel?

He flees the room, paces his bedchamber and finally falls asleep in his clothes, leaving the newborn Creature entirely alone.

Which actor, cast largely for his height of six foot five, played the Creature in Hammer's The Curse of Frankenstein?

Christopher Lee got the role although Hammer had also weighed up the even taller Bernard Bresslaw. The film was the studio's first color horror picture.

Which cereal maker launched Franken Berry in 1971, a strawberry-flavored spoof of Frankenstein's Monster?

General Mills introduced him alongside the chocolate-flavored Count Chocula, and the two cartoon monsters spent their commercials bickering over whose cereal was better.

What does a boy named Victor Frankenstein bring back from the dead in Tim Burton's animated film Frankenweenie?

His pet dog Sparky, a bull terrier, is hit by a car while chasing a home-run ball. Burton had first told the story as a short film back in 1984.

Which inventor's film studio produced the first screen Frankenstein, a silent short shot in three days in 1910?

Thomas Edison's company filmed it at its Bronx studio, with Charles Ogle as a monster who at one point comes face to face with himself in a mirror.

What did Mary Shelley say gave her the story of Frankenstein, after days of failing to think of a ghost story?

A waking dream came once she had gone to bed, eyes shut but wide awake: she saw a man kneeling beside the thing he had put together, and the thing begin to stir.

Which comedian voices Frankenstein's Monster in the first three films of the animated Hotel Transylvania series?

Kevin James played the Monster as one of Dracula's best friends, then handed the part to Brad Abrell for the fourth film, Transformania, in 2022.

How did Mary Shelley describe Frankenstein in her 1831 introduction, bidding it 'go forth and prosper'?

My hideous progeny was said with affection: she writes that she is fond of the book as the offspring of happy days, when death and grief were only words to her.

Which doctor, rumored to have made vermicelli move in a glass case, is cited in Frankenstein's preface?

Erasmus Darwin, grandfather of Charles, is named in the very first sentence of the preface, alongside the unnamed 'physiological writers of Germany'.

Which alchemist, born at Castle Frankenstein near Darmstadt, has been proposed as a model for Mary Shelley's scientist?

Johann Konrad Dippel once tried to buy the castle with the formula for an elixir and was refused. The link to the novel, argued in a 1975 book, remains disputed.