Peter Ackroyd

An unlikely friendship between a pair of nineteenth-century Oxford students including researcher Victor Frankenstein and poet Percy Bysshe Shelly is marked by disparate religious beliefs that lead to Victor's grisly experimentations with corpses.

A Novel

The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein

Sarah Sammis

In 2008 I read Requiem for the Author of Frankenstein by Molly Dwyer. Intrigued by the historical fiction of Mary Shelley's life, I decided to give Peter Ackroyd's book, The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein a try.

Where Dwyer carefully looks at the elements of Mary Shelley's life that could have come together to inspire Frankenstein. Ackroyd's book though focuses not on Mary Shelley. Instead the two main characters are Victor Frankenstein and his school chum Percy Shelley. Excuse me while I mutter to myself an scratch my head. Except for marriage and the encouragement of one spouse for another, what exactly does the poet have to do with his wife's novel?

I got about one hundred pages into this book before the misogyny got too much for me. Mary Shelley is relegated to the background while her fictional creation and her husband go about being macho. Percy and Mary are so out of character that I couldn't finish the book.

heleen de boever

Something between 'it was okay' and 'liked it', but extra points for the smoothness of language. 

update Jan.2014: I liked it better this time around. Super entertaining, especially if you have some knowledge about the Romantics and their particularities.

The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein A Novel

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