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This is a Strange and Unusual Podcast with Allison Horrocks and welcome to Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley.

Part 1.

For the next few months, I'll be reading Frankenstein for every other episode.

So it will be two episodes a month. One will be the traditional sort of episode.

And the other I will read about an hour's worth of the story or so until I reach the end of the book.

It's been a few years since I've read the story myself and I've always wanted to read it for the podcast.

So here we are. In between the Frankenstein episodes will be traditional ones beginning with a haunting nuisance part 2.

We'll also be getting back into haunted houses and then into man-made monsters after we finish Frankenstein and more through the winter.

So now join me for Frankenstein, the Preface, Letters and Chapter 1.

Happy Halloween, everyone.

Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley, Volume 1, Preface.

The event on which this fiction is bounded has been supposed by Dr. Darwin and some of the physiological writers of Germany as not of impossible occurrence.

I shall not be supposed as according the remotest degree of serious faith to such an imagination, yet in assuming it as the basis of a work of fancy, I have not considered myself as merely weaving a series of supernatural tears.

The event on which the interest of the story depends is exempt from the disadvantages of a mere tale of specters or enchantment.

It was recommended by the novelty of the situations which it develops, and however impossible as a physical fact, affords a point of view to the imagination.

For the delineating of human passions more comprehensive and commanding than any which the ordinary relations of existing events can yield.

I have thus endeavour to preserve the truth of the elementary principles of human nature, while I have not scruple to innovate upon their combinations, the Iliad, the tragic poetry of Greece, Shakespeare in the tempest and mid-summer night's dream.

And most especially Milton, in Paradise Lost, conformed to this rule, and the most humble novelist who seeks to confer or receive amusement from his labors may, without presumption, apply to prose, fiction, and license, or rather a rule from the adoption of which so many exquisite combinations of human feeling have resulted in the highest specimens of poetry.

The circumstance on which my story rests was suggested in casual conversation. It was commenced partly as a source of amusement, and partly as an expedient for exercising any untried resources of mind.

Other motives were mingled with these as the work proceeded.

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