Howard, Jennifer. "The Birth of FRANKENSTEIN." CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION November 7, 2008.

Almost from the moment that it was published anonymously on New Year's Day 1818, Frankenstein had readers and critics arguing over its origins. Early rumor held that it wasn't Mary Shelley but her husband, the Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, who deserved the credit. (Or the blame; some early readers were outraged by the novel's idea that a man could play God and create life.) Even after the couple confirmed Mary's authorship and her name appeared on new editions in 1823 and 1831, some critics held on to the idea that Percy was the guiding spirit behind Frankenstein. A few still do. As late as last year, an independent scholar named John Lauritsen dismissed Mary Shelley's claim to authorship. In The Man Who Wrote Frankenstein (Pagan Press), Lauritsen argued that "an uneducated, teenaged girl" could not have written the book but that her husband — "one of the greatest poets and prose stylists in the English language" — could have. Lauritsen is an outlier among Shelley scholars, almost all of whom consider Frankenstein to be Mary's work. They also agree that Percy was present at the creation, helping Mary nurture her nightmare inspiration as it grew into a full-blown novel. All the evidence — manuscripts, letters, journals, the Shelleys' own testimony — places Percy at the creative scene. (It's known, for instance, that he embellished the ending and made it, at least in some readers' minds, more melodramatic.) That's where the debate heats up. How much of a participant was Mary Shelley's better half? Should Percy be considered a co-creator of her masterpiece? Was he a co-opter of her genius? Was he Mary's Svengali, her Max Perkins, or merely a good copy editor? Thanks to the dogged textual work of a scholar named Charles E. Robinson, a professor of English at the University of Delaware, readers will now be able to see for themselves what Mary wrote before she turned it over to Percy's editorial ministrations. Last month, the Bodleian Library published Robinson's edition of The Original Frankenstein, a version of the novel that probably comes as close as it's possible to get to the draft that Mary first handed Percy to read. . . . Read the rest here: http://chronicle.com/free/v55/i11/11b01201.htm. See also Lynda Pratt's "Who Wrote the Original Frankenstein?" TLS October 29, 2008 (http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/the_tls/article5035717.ece).