Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus: Modernized and Annotated for Contemporary Readability — A Maison FORMS Edition

by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Maison FORMS (Editor), Elvin D. Almonte Jr (Editor)

FRANKENSTEIN — CUSTODIAL EDITION™
by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Elvin D. Almonte, Jr. Maison FORMS Published by a FORM of publishing

There are creators—and there are custodians.

When Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley imagined Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, she gave the modern world its defining myth of invention and consequence. This Maison FORMS Custodial Edition™ restores her work to the precision and moral voltage that first electrified it—without rewriting, dilution, or distortion.

Each sentence has been faithfully reconstructed for clarity, rhythm, and fidelity to Shelley’s voice, using the Maison’s in-house restoration editing as preservation. The result reads as if the text had always belonged to our century—alive, articulate, and exact—while remaining utterly hers.

Including a new Foreword, the Laws of the Maison, and a Founding Story tracing the lineage of custodianship, this volume re-introduces Frankenstein as both artifact and living a meditation on creation, responsibility, and the duty to preserve what we bring into being.

What makes this edition different

Modernized with exacting semantic fidelity—no modern paraphrase, no academic clutter.

Designed under the Maison FORMS canon where clarity is preservation™.

Includes proprietary foreword and reflective essays connecting Shelley’s themes to the ethics of modern creation.

For readers, builders, and thinkers who believe form and meaning deserve equal care, this edition is not a retelling—it’s a restoration.

Maison FORMS Custodial Edition™ 2025
Clarity is Preservation™

220 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 21, 2025

About the author

Mary Shelley (née Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, often known as Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley) was an English novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, travel writer, and editor of the works of her husband, Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley. She was the daughter of the political philosopher William Godwin and the writer, philosopher, and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft.

Mary Shelley was taken seriously as a writer in her own lifetime, though reviewers often missed the political edge to her novels. After her death, however, she was chiefly remembered only as the wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley and as the author of Frankenstein. It was not until 1989, when Emily Sunstein published her prizewinning biography Mary Shelley: Romance and Reality, that a full-length scholarly biography analyzing all of Shelley's letters, journals, and works within their historical context was published.

The well-meaning attempts of Mary Shelley's son and daughter-in-law to "Victorianise" her memory through the censoring of letters and biographical material contributed to a perception of Mary Shelley as a more conventional, less reformist figure than her works suggest. Her own timid omissions from Percy Shelley's works and her quiet avoidance of public controversy in the later years of her life added to this impression.

The eclipse of Mary Shelley's reputation as a novelist and biographer meant that, until the last thirty years, most of her works remained out of print, obstructing a larger view of her achievement. She was seen as a one-novel author, if that. In recent decades, however, the republication of almost all her writings has stimulated a new recognition of its value. Her voracious reading habits and intensive study, revealed in her journals and letters and reflected in her works, is now better appreciated. Shelley's recognition of herself as an author has also been recognized; after Percy's death, she wrote about her authorial ambitions: "I think that I can maintain myself, and there is something inspiriting in the idea". Scholars now consider Mary Shelley to be a major Romantic figure, significant for her literary achievement and her political voice as a woman and a liberal.