Jan. 1, 1818: Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is published

How a young woman not yet out of her teens came to write the haunting classic

Happy New Year, dear readers! As we turn the page to 2025, which many of us hope won’t be too scary, it seems fitting to pay tribute to one of the most influential and haunting stories of all time, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, published on this date, January 1, 1818.

Mary Shelley (1797 – 1851) wrote her first and most iconic novel while in her teens and…