Frankenstein Was Published Anonymously

In 1818, a London publishing house issued Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus in a tiny run of just 500 copies, spread across the standard three-volume format of the day. The book carried no author’s name on its title page.

The novel was the work of Mary Shelley, who had begun it at 18 during a ghost-story contest at Lake Geneva with Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron. Because the first edition was anonymous and opened with an unsigned preface by Percy plus a dedication to Mary’s father, the philosopher William Godwin, many early reviewers assumed a man had written it.

The first edition was published anonymously in 1818 as Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus.

Mary’s name did not appear on an English edition until 1823. Today the book is widely regarded as a foundational work of science fiction, and her surviving manuscript draft is held at Oxford’s Bodleian Library.