FIRST EDITION FRANKENSTEIN SELLS BIG

One of only three copies known to exist of the first edition of Mary Shelley's FRANKENSTEIN was auctioned off earlier this month for a monstrous $843,750. It is also the only known edition that was in a private collection, the other two are among holdings at the New York Public Library.

Details from the auction:

The superb Kern-Hersholt-Kettaneh copy of Mary Shelley's classic tale of terror, uncut in pink original boards

Mary Shelley. Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus. London: Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor, & Jones, 1818.

3 volumes, 12mo (c.190 x 110 mm). Half-titles and advertisements present in each volume, as issued. Original mottled pink boards, with printed spine labels, uncut; housed together in full morocco slipcase.

FIRST EDITION. A REMARKABLE UNCUT COPY IN ORIGINAL PINK BOARDS OF THE LANDMARK GOTHIC HORROR STORY, with paper watermarked "1816". In volume 2, page 21 is misnumbered 12, but page 25 is correctly numbered (misnumbered 52 in Tinker copy).

Mary Shelley's ground-breaking novel was begun in the summer of 1816, while on a trip to Lake Geneva with her soon-to-be husband, poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, and their friend, the poet Lord Byron. Confined indoors during an unseasonably cold summer, the writers competed to see who could compose the most compelling ghost story. The novel was finished over the course of 1817, when the Shelleys were living near Windsor.

Frankenstein was published in three volumes on January 1, 1818, by a small London publishing house, Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor & Jones, with a small print run of 500 copies. The first edition appeared anonymously, and featured an unsigned preface by Percy Shelley, and a dedication to Mary's father, philosopher William Godwin. Mary Shelley didn't publicly claim her novel until four years later, when her novel was adapted into a popular play.

EXCEPTIONALLY RARE: Copies in the original boards are extremely rare and sought after, this being one of only three sets to appear at auction since 1985. Recorded copies of Frankenstein in original boards were more often bound in plain blue-gray boards with tan paper backstrips, and printed spine labels. Based on the style of mottling of the paper covering this copy and the other institutional copies located, it is plausible that these may have been prepared for Continental distribution. Only three copies of Frankenstein in the more typical boards have appeared at auction over the past forty years: The Slater copy in 1982, The Paul Webster copy in 1985, and the Richard Manney copy in 1991. The Manney copy appeared again as part of the Ted Baum collection in 2021, and sold at Christie's New York for a record-breaking $1,170,000. The only other copies we could locate of Frankenstein in original pink boards are the two copies at the NYPL (Pforzheimer and Berg Collections), making the present copy the only known copy in pink boards in private hands, and the only set ever offered at auction.