The Lie About the Dream

The most famous story about Frankenstein is the one Mary Shelley told herself: a rainy summer on Lake Geneva, a ghost story contest, a dream. Charlotte Gordon, biographer of Mary Shelley and Mary Wollstonecraft, opens this series with the evidence that the dream never happened, and with the question of why a young author would need to invent it. She also tells you how she got here: a canon with no women in it, two teachers she names, and a book she once thought was dumb. She has grown into it. So will you.