Frankenstein's Afterlife

Frankenstein's Afterlife


Latest Episodes

1835 – Mary Shelley’s Lodore
May 31, 2019

Instead of reading Mary Shelley’s 900-page fifth novel, Lodore, save yourself some time and listen to our episode on it! We’ll provide you with the highlights, including a glimpse into the 38-year-old widow’s possibly queer relationships with other wom...

1834 – The Death of Samuel Taylor Coleridge
May 13, 2019

On the year of his death, we look at the life and work of one of the founders of British Romanticism, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Sources: Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/6081 Samuel Taylor Coleridge,

1833 – Mary Shelley’s The Mortal Immortal
March 27, 2019

In this episode, you can hear Mary Shelley’s short story, “The Mortal Immortal,” presented in its entirety. This story was originally published in the 1833 issue of The Keepsake, a literary annual to which Mary Shelley contributed many stories and poem...

1832 – The Invention of Science (and Science Fiction)
March 24, 2019

Why do we call Mary Shelley the inventor of science fiction? And why does it matter? We’ll explore those questions and also talk about what they have to do with The Royal Society of London, The British Association for the Advancement of Science,

Bonus – Eric Molinsky’s Imaginary Worlds
February 26, 2019

In our previous episode, I played an excerpt from Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine, in which the hosts discussed the history of the man who may have inspired the creation of Frankenstein. This week I offer, in its entirety,

Bonus – My Hideous Progeny
February 25, 2019

In this episode, I discuss the background of this podcast and play an excerpt from an episode of one of my favorite podcasts, Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine. The episode, “The (Maybe) Real Dr. Frankenstein,

Bonus – Rachel Feder’s Harvester of Hearts
January 28, 2019

In this bonus episode, I interview Rachel Feder, the author of Harvester of Hearts: Motherhood under the Sign of Frankenstein. Harvester of Hearts is published by Northwestern University Press: http://www.nupress.northwestern.

1831 – Revisions
January 18, 2019

Frankenstein was revised several times in the early years of its rise to fame–by Percy Shelley, by William Godwin, and, in 1831, by Mary herself. Sources: A collation of the 1818 and 1831 editions of Frankenstein from the University of Pennsylvania: ht...

1830 – Mary Shelley’s The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck
December 14, 2018

Nobody ever really talks about Mary Shelley’s later novels. There’s a reason for that. Sources: Mary Shelly, The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck Erin L Webster Garrett, “The politics of ambivalence: romance, history, and gender in Mary W.

1829 – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Faust
December 13, 2018

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s novel, The Sorrows of Werther, is one of the most important texts in the romanticist movement, and is one of only three books with which Frankenstein’s creature learns how to read,