1 Frankenstein: Introduction + Letter 1
Mary Shelley
Frankenstein – or The Modern Prometheus is a well-known classic by Mary Shelley about a scientist, Victor Frankenstein, who creates a sentient creature through an unorthodox scientific experiment.
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Letter 1 (part 1)
To Mrs. Saville, England.
St. Petersburg, 11th December, 17—.
You will be glad to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such apprehension. I arrived here yesterday, and my first task is to assure my dear sister of my welfare and increasing confidence in the success of my undertaking.
I am already far north of London, and as I walk in the streets of St. Petersburg, I feel a cold northern breeze play upon my cheeks, which braces my nerves and fills me with delight. Do you understand this feeling? This breeze, which has travelled from the regions towards which I am advancing, gives me a foretaste of those icy climates. Inspired by this wind of promise, my daydreams become more fervent and vivid.
I try in vain to convince myself that the pole is the seat of frost and desolation; it always presents itself to my imagination as a region of beauty and delight. There, Margaret, the sun is forever visible, its broad disc just skirting the horizon and diffusing a perpetual splendour.
There—with your permission, my sister, I will place some trust in previous navigators—there snow and frost are banished. And, sailing over a calm sea, we may be carried to a land surpassing in wonders and beauty every region discovered so far on the habitable globe. Its productions and features may be unparalleled, as the phenomena of the heavenly bodies undoubtedly are in those undiscovered solitudes.
What may not be expected in a country of eternal light? There, I may discover the wonderful power which attracts the compass needle. And I may make a thousand celestial observations that only require this voyage to render their apparent irregularities consistent forever.
I shall satiate my ardent curiosity with the sight of a part of the world never before visited, and may tread upon a land never before trodden by the foot of man. These are my enticements, and they are sufficient to conquer all fear of danger or death. They induce me to commence this laborious voyage with the joy a child feels when he embarks in a little boat with his holiday friends on an expedition of discovery up his native river.
But supposing all these conjectures to be false, you cannot deny the inestimable benefit I shall confer on all mankind, to the last generation, by discovering a passage near the pole to those countries which currently require so many months to reach. Or by discovering the secret of the magnet, which, if possible, can only be achieved by an undertaking such as mine.