I’m writing today  — scroll up! — about the Summit Entertainment plans to film the Frankenstein pre-quel This Dark Endeavor. I wanted, though, to put up a few chapters from the original Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley classic before this to give you a chance to read the chapters in which Dr. Frankenstein’s modern genius, of which the book is largely a critique, is revealed as the worst of alchemy and chemistry combined.

Without further ado, then, Shelley’s Frankenstein, the opening alchemy chapters.

Chapter 2

I feel exquisite pleasure in dwelling on the recollections of childhood, before misfortune had tainted my mind and changed its bright visions of extensive usefulness into gloomy and narrow reflections upon self. Besides, in drawing the picture of my early days, I also record those events which led, by insensible steps, to my after tale of misery, for when I would account to myself for the birth of that passion which afterwards ruled my destiny I find it arise, like a mountain river, from ignoble and almost forgotten sources; but, swelling as it proceeded, it became the torrent which, in its course, has swept away all my hopes and joys. Natural philosophy is the genius that has regulated my fate; I desire, therefore, in this narration, to state those facts which led to my predilection for that science.

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