Kirstin Mills Art and Illustration, Academic Research, Writing and Teaching

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Overheard Tales: Coleridge, Shelley and Frankenstein’s Poetic Inspiration

October 26, 2018 In Academic Research All Blog Posts No Comment

Mary Shelley’s early life was made up of many wonderful and formative moments that would nestle in her memory, stoking her imagination, eventually to reemerge within her first and most famous novel, Frankenstein. For Day 3 of Frankenweek, this post explores one of these moments, experienced during her unique childhood, and its lingering impression on her. As the daughter of two of the most eminent writers of the age, William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, the young Mary Godwin was connected with many of the nineteenth-century’s greatest thinkers, who would often visit to converse with her father. Mary was often allowed to join these conversations, as a listener and occasional contributor. Undoubtedly the most significant of these visitors – and the one who would leave the most indelible impression on Mary – was the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. (more…)

Frankenstein at 200, Frankenstein, Frankenweek, 200th Anniversary, Frankenreads, Mary Shelley, Landscapes, Travel, Tourism, Grand Tour, History of a Six Weeks Tour, Mont Blanc, Europe, death, sublime, Bourke, Blog, Gothic, Novel, Kirstin Mills

A Frankenstein Travel Guide: Mary Shelley’s Journeys into the Sublime (Anniversary Series #2)

October 25, 2018 In Academic Research All Blog Posts Gothic Landscapes No Comment

The second in my Frankenstein at 200 Anniversary Blog Series looks at one of the most crucial elements of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein: the profound sense of place that Shelley evokes as Frankenstein pursues his creature through increasingly wild and inhospitable landscapes that are repeatedly linked with death and the supernatural. From the seas of ice that open and close the novel, threatening to swallow and crush Walton’s ship, to the glacial summits of Mont Blanc, landscapes indicate the wild, sublime and insurmountable limits of nature that Frankenstein has attempted to transgress in his scientific creation of the ‘monster’, but which ultimately still wield their immense and unforgiving power over his mortal frame. They also represent Frankenstein’s increasing distance from the safe comforts of home, family and society – Frankenstein’s only comfort in such wild and harsh terrain is the spirits of the dead that seem naturally at home in such regions. But did you know that Shelley’s depiction of these landscapes is drawn from her own exciting travels, and that her experiences in these incredible real-life places form one of the central inspirations behind her novel? (more…)

Frankenstein at 200, Frankenstein, Frankenweek, 200th Anniversary, Frankenreads, Mary Shelley, Villa Diodati, Percy Shelley, Byron, Polidori, Ghost Stories, Summer of 1816, 1816, Italy, Blog, Gothic, Novel, Kirstin Mills

The Birth of Frankenstein: Ghost Stories, Vampires & Villa Diodati (Anniversary Series #1)

October 24, 2018 In Academic Research All Blog Posts No Comment

Today marks the beginning of Frankenweek, and I’m celebrating with the first post in my Frankenstein at 200: Anniversary Blog Series. The story of the birth of Frankenstein as part of a ghost-story-telling competition in a storm-lashed lakeside villa is almost as haunting and fantastic as the novel itself. In the summer of 1816, the young Mary Godwin, only 18 years old, had just travelled to the continent with her lover, the married Percy Shelley, their infant son, William, and Mary’s step sister, Clare Clairmont. After meeting with the celebrated poet Lord Byron and his travelling physician Dr John Polidori in Geneva, they settled in a small lakeside cottage only a short walk away from Byron’s much grander rented mansion, the Villa Diodati. The parties met frequently, and it was at this villa, surrounded by vineyards and with magnificent views of the towering mountains and the shimmering lake beneath, that Frankenstein experienced its first sparks of life. (more…)

Frankenstein at 200, Frankenstein, Frankenweek, 200th Anniversary, Frankenreads, Mary Shelley, Blog, Gothic, Novel, Science Fiction, Kirstin Mills

Frankenstein at 200: Special Anniversary Blog Series

October 18, 2018 In Academic Research All Blog Posts No Comment

This year marks 200 years of one of the world’s most famous and enduring novels: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. First published in 1818, it quickly became a perpetually reincarnating creature of its own, transforming through multiple retellings, adaptations, references and parodies throughout the next 200 years. Central in each retelling is the iconic image of the ambitious scientist haunted by the horrors of his monstrous creation, most famously depicted in Jame’s Whale’s 1931 film featuring Boris Karloff’s iconic “monster,” complete with neck bolts and green skin, ushered into being by Frankenstein’s triumphant exclamations, “It’s alive!!” (more…)

Elle Fanning as Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein

‘Mary Shelley’ Film Review: Beauty? Yes! Truth? Not so much… (& new podcast!)

July 4, 2018 In Academic Research All Blog Posts Reviews No Comment

“Her greatest love inspired her darkest creation.” So reads the poster tagline of the 2018 film Mary Shelley, starring Elle Fanning. A creative re-imagining of Mary Shelley’s life leading up to the publication of Frankenstein – the novel for which Shelley is still best known – the film presents itself as a biopic that will reveal “the real life story of Mary Shelley”, which, it posits, is “the life that inspired Frankenstein.” Such a premise sounds wonderful indeed: Mary Shelley deserves a lot more attention, and her life was certainly one of the most exciting, tragic and inspiring that you could read about. Even a chronological reenactment of events recorded in her journals and letters (of which there are many) would reveal a wealth of real-life drama. Certainly too, elements of her life inspired her writing. However, there is one problem (more…)

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Portrait of Mary Shelley

Interview: Mary Shelley, Mental Health and Travel Writing

February 17, 2018 In Academic Research All Blog Posts Conferences No Comment

I was recently interviewed by the Keats-Shelley Association of America (KSAA) about my research into Mary Shelley, mental health, travel writing and the gothic, which I presented last September at The Shelleys conference in London. This morning I awoke to the delightful news that the interview has now been published online. This research resonates with me on a very personal level (as you’ll see by reading the interview), so I was deeply touched and heartened to read the wonderful feedback it has already received from some Shelley scholars online.

In the interview I answer three excellent questions about my research posed by Ellen Nicholls, who did a wonderful job of chairing the panel on which I spoke at the conference. My responses explore ideas relating to Mary Shelley’s grief, depression and emotional trauma following the many tragic events in her life, not least the deaths of her husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and several of their infant children. I discuss what we can learn from the ways that Shelley handles this grief by turning to the dual outlets of travel and creative writing, and the ways that she thereby constructs a space within which to navigate, understand and attempt to heal her mental anguish. I also look at the competing and complimentary influences upon her writings: her blurred personal and professional agendas; the influences of the gothic, sentimental, and epistolary genres; and the perennial question of how close and how equal was the collaboration between Mary and Percy Shelley (my opinion on this is quite strong, in rebuff of a long tradition of overlooking the genius of Mary Shelley in favour of her husband).

You can read the full interview here:

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