JA and Frankenstein
Posted by Stolzi on November 23, 1997 at 15:49:06:
In response to JA and Frankenstein, written by Laura W on November 23, 1997 at 11:10:03
Perhaps Austen would have said what one reviewer said at the time (reviews printed in the back of Leonard Wolf's Essential Frankenstein):
"Our taste and our judgement alike revolt at this kind of writing ... it inculcates no lesson of conduct, manners, or morality; it cannot mend, and will not even amuse its readers, unless their taste have been deplorably vitiated" [catch that subjunctive! I'm impressed!] "... it gratuitously harasses the heart, and wantonly adds to the store, already too great, of painful sensations."
-- John Wilson Croker in the Quarterly ("savage and Tartarly," as I believe Byron called that magazine).
Sir Walter Scott, though, gave F a tolerably good review in Blackwood's.
Percy Bysshe Shelley reviewed it very favorably for The Athenaeum. Surprise, surprise!
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