Mary SHELLEY.

Lot 23
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Estimation :
20000 - 25000 EUR
Result with fees
Result : 113 738EUR
Mary SHELLEY.
Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus. London, Lackington, Hugues, Harding, Mavor, & Jones, 1818. 3 volumes in-12 : flamed basane, richly decorated smooth spines, red morocco titles and tomes, gilt fillet and gilt roulette around the boards, gilt roulette on the edges (modern binding). Uncommon first edition: 500 copies were printed. The novel, like the preface by Percy Shelley, was published anonymously: it is dedicated to the author's father, William Godwin. This masterpiece of European literature was born of a competition initiated by Lord Byron one night in June 1816. During a joint holiday on Lake Geneva, the writer suggested to Percy Shelley, his future wife Mary and John Polidori, his doctor, that they write a ghost story. The excellence of the novel published by Mary Shelley a year and a half later far surpassed the works of her "competitors"-a mysterious fragment of a novel by Byron and Polidori's The Vampyre. Impeccable decorated binding in the taste of the time. The false titles have not been preserved, nor the advertising leaflets. (Elizabeth Campbell Denlinger, It's Alive! A visual History of Frankenstein, Pierpont Morgan Library, 2018, p. 159.- David Spurr and Nicolas Ducimetière, Frankenstein Created from Darkness, Martin Bodmer Foundation, 2016, no. 26.)
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