The Journal
What to read after Frankenstein
Frankenstein sits at the intersection of several literary traditions simultaneously -- Gothic horror, philosophical fiction, proto-science fiction, and the Romantic-era crisis of faith in science and progress. What you read next depends on which of those threads most drew you in.
Mary Shelley published Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus in 1818. If you finished it wanting more of the same -- the moral weight, the isolated creator, the creature that can speak for itself -- here are the directions the novel can point you.
If you want more Gothic horror from the same era#
Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897) is the natural companion. Both novels are structured around questions of science versus the supernatural, modern rationalism versus ancient forces, and both use a frame narrative device (letters, journals, multiple perspectives) to withhold and then reveal. Dracula is in the Foxing catalog, free. For a full reading of what Dracula represents thematically, the Victorian reading of Dracula covers the symbolic dimensions.
Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) is the most direct descendant of Frankenstein's central question: what happens when a scientist creates something he cannot control? Jekyll's Hyde is a creature as much as Frankenstein's monster, and the novel shares Shelley's interest in the relationship between creator and creation. Free on Foxing.
Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights (1847) is Gothic in a different register -- domestic rather than scientific -- but Heathcliff shares significant qualities with Frankenstein's creature: a being defined by exclusion, formed by the treatment he received, and capable of genuine menace. Free on Foxing.
If you want more philosophical horror#
Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) covers the most similar territory: a creation that takes on the moral consequences its creator refuses to bear. The portrait is a creature as surely as Frankenstein's monster, and it pursues the same relentless accounting. Free on Foxing.
Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story "Rappaccini's Daughter" (1844) is a direct descendant of Frankenstein's scientific-hubris theme: a scientist who grows poisonous plants and unwittingly makes his daughter poisonous to human touch. It is brief and devastating.
If you were most drawn to the creature's philosophical voice#
John Milton's Paradise Lost, which the creature himself reads within the novel and which Shelley uses as her primary literary reference, is the obvious next step. The creature identifies with Satan cast out, and with Adam asking why he was created. Reading Paradise Lost after Frankenstein makes both richer.
Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground (1864) features a narrator who shares significant qualities with the creature: isolated, hyper-articulate, resentful of a world that will not accept him, and fully conscious of his own contradictions. Free on Foxing -- the notes are often published with Crime and Punishment.
If you want more of Shelley's world#
William Godwin's Caleb Williams (1794) is the novel by Shelley's father that most directly influenced her. It features a young man who discovers his employer's secret and is then relentlessly pursued. The pursuit dynamic and the question of guilt and persecution run through both novels.
Further reading#
For the full gothic tradition that Frankenstein belongs to, the best gothic novels in the public domain includes all the titles above and more.
For the life of Shelley and the personal history that shaped the novel, who Mary Shelley was and why Frankenstein still matters is the biographical companion.