In a letter the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote to George Gordon, Lord Byron from Milan on April 30th, 1818, he informs Byron that he has sent him a copy of his wife’s new epistolary Gothic Romance Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus.

Who would ever have thought that, in November 2011, almost three hundred years later, Sammy Jay, the unemployed son of a government minister and one of a group of lay-about English graduates from Oxford University just ‘hanging out’, would find this exact same book squirreled away in a dusty bookcase owned by his father.

This extremely rare first edition of Frankenstein, sent to Byron by Shelley and signed ‘To Lord Byron from the author’, was published in three volumes in 1818, and put on the block at Christie’s the year following where it was expected to sell for upwards of $300,000.

It was on sold to a private collector for an undisclosed sum, understood to be much more than that.

A further first edition of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein set a new world record for a published work by a female author when it sold at auction in New York in 2021 for $(US)1.17 million.

The initial idea for Frankenstein surfaced in early 1816 while Mary Godwin, her stepsister Claire Clairmont, and Percy Shelley rented a modest house next door to the Villa Diodati, a mansion in Cologny, near Lake Geneva in Switzerland leased by their friend Byron and Dr John Polidori, his physician, friend, and supplier – laudanum mostly, but opium too for the ladies.  The five spent three days holed up in Villa Diodati during what Mary called ‘the year without a summer’, drinking, drugging, indiscriminately copulating, and writing fantasy stories.

Neel Dozome, writing in Medium, describes it thus,“The summer of 1816 saw the 28-year old “mad, bad and dangerous to know” Byron, sweep into Geneva in a replica of Napoleon’s coach, not quite escaping the trailing whirlwinds of scandal and gossip that followed everywhere in his wake; accompanied by a peacock, a monkey, a dog, several footmen, and his doctor, John Polidori. The plan: sex, drugs (especially laudanum), and poetry.

An entourage of fellow child-prodigies followed, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, her boyfriend, the 23-year-old Shelley, and her stepsister, the ravishing beauty, Claire Claremont. The sisters were eighteen. Mary made an honest man of Shelley later that year and took his surname.

One evening, in the shadow-filled Swiss villa by the lake, Byron read from a book of German gothic poems. Shelley, probably baked on opium tincture, hallucinated a bare-breasted vision of Mary with eyes where her nipples should have been and ran screaming from the room. This encouraged Byron to hold a horror story contest to further freak Shelley out. These macabre games in the candlelit parlours, windows shaking, the sky outside crackling with electricity, led to writing that would bring a revolution to English literature, birthing the genre of Gothic Horror. Polidori would write The Vampyre, which would, in turn inspire Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Mary Shelley would write Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus, the first science fiction English novel.’

And in 2025, in Aotearoa New Zealand, Jess Sayer would write her own excellent version of these events for our delectation. As rabbit holes go, this is the best. Each of the personalities, already writers, penned thousands upon thousands of letters and never threw anything away leaving us with journals rich in content and with subtle amendments such as Mary’s comments about Byron where she crossed out “whom I loved” at the end of a passage and replaced it with “whose departure leaves the dull earth dark as midnight”, and then left both

Rich pickings indeed.

Clever Jess Sayer whose entire work reeks of absolute authenticity (this is a good thing).

Published in 1818, Godwin – now Shelley – revised Frankenstein and reissued it in 1831 by which time both Byron and Shelley were dead, as was Polidori. This later version includes reflections and a range of monologues that magnify darker themes such as her disillusionment with society. Mary had endured harsh criticism of her writing, the widely accepted accusations that Percy wrote the book, the painful loss of children, and her husband. ‘Inspired in the company of fellow writers and capturing the turmoil of her own life, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein remains a brilliant and complex contribution to the canon of Romantic literature with its preface written by Shelley and a dedication to her father, William Godwin.’

In the spirit of ‘everyone’s a critic’, I also include this

“But, dear Lord, have you ever actually *read* this book?

It begins as the account of an English sea-captain, who purchases a ship in the Russian Arctic, and then crews it with a team of entirely-English-speaking seamen whom he finds in the Far Russian North. (Hello?). This part of the book is written in the form of letters (sent how, we wonder?) to his sister Margaret. He then finds Dr Frankenstein floating on an ice-floe in the Arctic. Then the captain begins to narrate what Frankenstein tells him — of how he studied science, and excelled his professors in Denmark. Here he created the monster (no details, and covered in half a page). He goes home to Switzerland and forgets all about his monster entirely, until it shows up to kill one of his relatives. (It has found its way there all by itself). Now the Captain starts relating Frankenstein’s narration of the Monster’s personal story. The Monster somehow fled to France (hello?) where it hid in a woodshed for two years. The owners were disgraced Spanish nobles. By observing them through a chink in the wall, the monster not only learned French, but taught himself to read Plutarch’s “Lives” and other seminal works of European literature. The monster feels sorry for the young man in the family… and then we get HIS story, related by the monster, related by Frankenstein, as told to the Sea-Captain.

This is one of the most poorly written, atrociously constructed books ever published. If Shelley’s sister (sic) were not the author, this dross would never have seen publication.”

As for Jess Sayers script, I simply can’t speak highly enough of it.

Deciding to go to the theatre in 2025 is a complex business and the older I get the more challenging it becomes. It’s an even bigger decision in the middle of a Tāmaki Makaurau winter or now, as we perch on the cusp of a 2025 spring. What could possibly go wrong? Heather du Plessis Allen, on Newstalk ZB on Monday, called us all pussies and snowflakes for taking sensible precautions when the wind came up on the weekend. After all, why close the Harbour Bridge to save lives, why lock the gates to Cornwall Park in case the seventy-year Auckland Archery Club clubhouse, usually packed with kids, might be destroyed by a falling macrocarpa?

Which it was.

We do have to think about these things when we head off into the dark because Frank was waiting for Mary, he might be waiting for us too.

Like we should be so lucky.

I’ve had the privilege of enjoying theatre in many different countries and there is no experience currently that betters attending a show at the ASB Waterfront Theatre. It hasn’t always been like this, but the current team certainly go the extra mile. As a reviewer, I like to do my homework, especially when the show is as deeply entrenched in literary history as is Mary: The Birth of Frankenstein, so in these situations the show program assumes a particular importance. It allows me to balance what I know against what the production team intend. Mary: The Birth of Frankenstein ticks all the boxes: the website is easy to navigate, parking is readily available, the welcome at the box office is top notch. The front of house team is uniformly excellent – even the sweatshirt of the young person on the door said ‘kia ora’ – and the bar facilities and the food are great. If that wasn’t enough, there’s a program available online, more free copies available in the foyer, and it’s chock full of useful, readable information. Great photographs too, and even the odd snippet of snappy theatre gossip.

Having entered, we sit ourselves down with our glasses of wine, and chat as we wait for the show to go up. The seating is comfortable, and I am having a nice time. I take in the stage setting, a large neon sign that says ‘Mary’ in scarlet. I am about to remind my family that Mary is my middle name and make one of my appalling jokes, when, without warning, everything goes black, and the sky explodes.

Of course it does.

It’s Gothic horror, its Frankenstein.

What follows is a most thoroughly engaging production.

Back in the dark ages when I studied English literature at Canterbury University, the common understanding was that Byron and Shelley did not get along, but now I’ve read the letters I know better. Byron was certainly quite a nasty piece of work – we see this in Tom Clarke’s ‘warts and all’ Byron right from his very first entrance – and Dominic Ona-Ariki’s naïve and selfish Shelley is exactly the foil the play needs. Timmie Cameron’s Claire Clairmont convinces Mary to join her in following Byron to Europe and the two become (largely self-managing) playthings for the boys throughout the following three days of tidy debauchery.

We see each through the lens of the others and there are times when it’s difficult to track the power shifts in this eloquent game of ‘who’s scariest’ until after interval when all becomes clear and true horrors arrive as though a door to hell has been opened and we see characters we’ve grown to know – though not necessarily like – garbed in psychic robes that we could never have imagined.

It does stop short of being truly scary – talk on the way home of ‘The Exorcist’, ‘Psycho’, ‘Se7en’, ‘Silence of the Lambs’, the Trump presidency – but it gets damn close. Performances are all especially good in the second half, supported by outstanding work throughout from John Verryt (set design), Jo Kilgour (lighting), Sarah Voon (costume design), Leon Radojkovic (composer and sound design), Ross McCormack (choreographer and movement director), and Katrina George. It’s a very complete work so a big round of applause for the leadership too – teams don’t come together by accident.

We have to remember no-one goes anywhere without the wordies – it’s a play about words after all – and we owe it to Jess Sayer for hers, they are simply outstanding. An additional thank you to Jess because this has been an incredibly long journey, time well spent from my point of view, but I didn’t have to spend all day every day for months on end with these irascible, horny, and turbulent buggers – the characters, I mean, not the actors – reliving all their mistakes in some sort of self-imposed, chamber of … well, horrors.

I hope it’s been worth it.

At no point did the raucous storm effects, the furtive music, and all the other visual and aural strangeness detract from the playing out of the narrative, and the actors collectively tell Mary’s story splendidly. There are particularly memorable performances from Arlo Green as everyone’s muse and Byron’s soon to be dismissed physician, Dr. John Polidori, from Emily Adams as the enigmatic (and downright disturbing) Marta, and from Olivia Tennet as the wonderful Mary Godwin, all of whom told Jess Sayer’s story splendidly.

The audience loves Mary: The Birth of Frankenstein, leaps to its collective feet and cheers as the house lights come up. Nothing makes me happier than to sit in the midst of a satisfied audience especially when it’s accompanied by an excellent script, a top line production, quality acting, and research I can really get my teeth into.

Boxes ticked, 10 out of 10, so get your tickets now, Mary closes on the 7^th.

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