Lord Byron’s copy of Frankenstein, autographed by Mary Shelley, will soon be auctioned by Peter Harrington.
It had lain untouched for 50 years in the library of Lord Jay until his grandson came to sort his things for donation to the Bodelian.
As the Huffington Post reminds us:
On a stormy night in June 1816 at the Villa Diodati on the shores of Lake Geneva, a ghost-story writing contest between Byron, the Shelleys, and Byron’s physician Polidori led to the composition of Mary Shelley’s novel…
Written on Mary Shelley’s return to England, the book was published in a small edition of only 500 copies, the publisher giving six copies for her personal use to Mary.
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian and Michael Walsh for the story.]
Discover more from File 770
Subscribe to get the latest posts to your email.
Just the thing to add a bit of cache to a book collection… unless, of course, you’d rather spend the three quarters of a million dollars on a house, car, and having a life. You could even go to the Worldcon a few times on that sort of money.
You could even buy a few con T-shirts on the first day instead of hoping for a liquidation sale.
I can’t afford it, so I’m not worrying about it.
…until his grandson came to sort his things for donation to the Bodelian.
Wait- does this imply that the Bodelian Library doesn’t want Lord Byron’s copy of Frankenstein? If so, why?
Maybe they already have Percy Shelley’s copy.