Frankenstein tells the story of Victor Frankenstein , a young scientist who creates a sapient creature in an unorthodox scientific experiment. Shelley started writing the story when she was 18, and the first edition was published anonymously in London on 1 January , when she was Her name first appeared in the second edition, which was published in Paris in Shelley travelled through Europe in , moving along the river Rhine in Germany, and stopping in Gernsheim , 17 kilometres 11 mi away from Frankenstein Castle , where, about a century earlier, Johann Konrad Dippel , an alchemist , had engaged in experiments.
Galvanism and occult ideas were topics of conversation for her companions, particularly for her lover and future husband Percy Bysshe Shelley. Frankenstein is one of the best-known works of English literature. Infused with elements of the Gothic novel and the Romantic movement, it has had a considerable influence on literature and on popular culture, spawning a complete genre of horror stories, films, and plays.
Since the publication of the novel, the name "Frankenstein" has often been used to refer to the monster. Frankenstein is a frame story written in epistolary form. Set in the 18th century, it documents a fictional correspondence between Captain Robert Walton and his sister, Margaret Walton Saville. Captain Walton is a failed writer who sets out to explore the North Pole in hopes of expanding scientific knowledge. After departing from Archangel , the ship is trapped by pack ice on the journey across the Arctic Ocean.
During this time, the crew spots a dog sled driven by a gigantic figure. A few hours later, the ice splits apart, freeing the ship, and the crew rescues a nearly frozen and emaciated man named Victor Frankenstein from a drifting ice floe. Victor has been in pursuit of the gigantic man observed by Walton's crew. Victor starts to recover from his exertion; he sees in Walton the same obsession that has destroyed him and recounts a story of his life's miseries to Walton as a warning.
From a young age, Victor has a strong desire to understand the world. He is obsessed with studying theories of alchemists , though when he is older he realizes that such theories are considerably outdated. When Victor is five years old, his parents adopt Elizabeth Lavenza the orphaned daughter of an expropriated Italian nobleman whom Victor calls 'cousin'.
