Amazon's List Of 100 Best Books To Read In One's Life

I'm a sucker for lists, and this is one of the best. I won't change my reading plans based on this list but it it is interesting. Here they are, all 100, said to be alphabetical, but some at the end are not in alphabetical order:

• 1984, George Orwell
• A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking
• A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Dave Eggers
• A Long Way Gone, Ishmael Beah
• The Bad Beginning or. Orphans, Lemony Snicket
• A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine Lengle
• Alice Munro: Selected Stories
• Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
• All the President's Men, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein
• Angela's Ashes, Frank McCourt
• Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret, Judy Blume
• Bel Canto, Ann Patchett
• Beloved, Toni Morrison
• Born to Run -- A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen, Christopher McDougall
• Catch-22, Joseph Heller
• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl
• Charlotte's Web, E. B. White
• Cutting For Stone, Abraham Verghese
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Jeff Kinney
• Dune, Frank Herbert
• Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
• Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream, Hunter S. Thompson
• Goodnight Moon, Margaret Wise Brown
• Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
• Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared M. Diamond (overrated)
• Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, J. K. Rowling
• In Cold Blood, Truman Capote
• Interpreter of Maladies,  Jhumpa Lahiri
• Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison
• Jimmy Corrigan: Smartest Kid on Earth, Chris Ware
• Kitchen Confidential, Anthony Bourdain
• Life After Life, Kate Atkinson
• Little House on the Prairie, Laura Ingalis Wilder
• Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
• Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
• Love Medicine, Louise Erdrich
• Man's Search for Menaing, Viktor Franki
• Me Talk Pretty One Day, David Sedaris
• Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides
• Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie
• Moneyball, Michael Lewis
• Of Human Bondage, W. Somerset Maugham
• On the Road, Jack Kerouac
• Out of Africa, Isak Dinesen
• Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi
• Portnoy's Complaint, Phillip Roth
• Silent Spring, Rachel Carson
• Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut
• Team of Rivals, Doris Kearns Goodwin
• The Age of Innocence, EdithWharton
• The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Michael Chabon
• Malcolm X, Malcolm X and Alex Haley
• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz
• The Book Thief, Markus Zusak
• The Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger
• The Color of Water, James McBride
• The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen
• The Devil in the White City, Erik Larson
• The Diary of Anne Frank, Anne Frank
• The Fault in our Stars, John Green
• The Giver, Lois Lowry
• Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead, Brene Brown
• The Golden Compass, Phillip Pullman
• The Great Gatsby,  F. Scott Fitzgerald
• The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood
• Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
• The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins
• The House at Pooh Corner, A. A. Milne
• The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot
• The Liar's Club, Mary Karr
• The Lightning Thief, Rick Riordan
• The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupery
• The Long Goodbye, Raymond Chanderl
• The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and The Road to 9/11, Lawrence Wright
• The Lord of the Rings, J. R. R. Tolkien
• The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat and Other Clinical Tales, Oliver Sacks
• The Omnivore's Dilemma, Michael Pollan
• The Poisonwood Bible: A Novel, Barbara Kingsolver
• The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York, Robert A. Caro
• The Right Stuff, Tom Wolfe
• The Road, Cormac McCarthy
• The Secret History, Donna Tartt
• The Shining, Stephen King
• The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway
• The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien
• The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Eric Carle
• The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
• The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle: A Novel, Haruki Murakami
• The World According To Garp, John Irving
• The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion
• Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe
• To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee
• Unbroken: A World War II Story Of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption, Laura Hillenbrand
• Valley of the Dolls, Jacqueline Susann
• Where the Sidewalk Ends, Shel Silverstein
• Where the Wild Things Are, Maurice Sendak
• The Phantom Tollbooth, Norton Juster
• The Stranger, Albert Camus
• Breath, Eyes, Memory, Edwidge Danticat
• Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn

Comments:

• I was pleasantly surprised by some on the list, including Tim O'Brien
• I was surprised by the absence of the great women writers of the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries (Mary Shelley, Emily Bronte, George Eliot, Virginia Woolf, just to name a few)
• I was surprised to see Hawking but not Darwin on the list
• I was surprised to see none of the following: Defoe, Joseph Conrad, James Joyce
• any list that includes Fear and Loathing by Hunter S Thompson is almost a perfect list
• I was surprised to see how much reading I have left to do
• I think our older granddaughter (age 10) has read more on the list than I have (if one counts all seven volumes of Harry Potter and three volumes of Hunger Games)

Tristram Shandy, Laurence Sterne

Laurence Sterne, 1713 - 1768, Tristram Shandy, nine volumes, 1759 – 1767. A must-read is the Everyman’s Library edition, with an introduction by Peter Conrad, c. 1991, but included in Everyman’s Library as early as 1912.

197 pages; 111 chapters. 

In the introduction, these four novelists were, perhaps, the “founding fathers” of the English novel: Defoe, Richardson, and Sterne, and Cervantes, though not English.

Mentioned in passing in the introduction: Marianne Moore, Jane Eyre, Don Juan (Byron), Hamlet, Whitman’s Prelude, and many others, particularly Fielding’s Tom Jones.

From page viii of the introduction,

“… Sterne discovers a new way of writing and a new way of understanding human nature which makes his book a sacred text both for Romantic poets and modern novelists, who like him want to liberate literature from its self-imposed and unnecessary rules.”

Everyman's Library was founded in 1906 and relaunched in 1991. It aims to offer the most complete library in the English language of the world's classics. Each volume is printed in a classic typeface on acid-free, cream-wove paper with a sewn full cloth binding.

I first read Tristram Shandy some years ago, probably in 2004 or thereabouts when I was at the height of my reading program which began in 2002. I was, at that time, reading about the evolution of the novel. Until much later, I did not know how "important" Richardson's Clarissa and Defoe's Robinson Crusoe were in that development, both of which I read about that time. It is no easy "thing" to get through Clarissa. 

To some extent, I suppose, Laurence Sterne was the Mark Twain of his era.

On The Map, Simon Garfield, c. 2013

The full title: On The Map: A Mind-Expanding Exploration of the Way the World Looks.

The Year Without Summer: 1816, William K. Klingaman And Nicholas P. Klingaman, c. 2013

How coincidental, having just read the Mary Shelley biography, c. 2013, which discussed the summer of 1816 when Mary Shelley began writing Frankenstein. See my earlier post.

The full title of the book: The Year Without Summer: 1816 and the Volcano That Darkened the World and Changed History.

It discusses the lives of famous personages affected by the eruption and the socioeconomic events that resulted between 1815 and 1817 due to this eruption.

Volcano, location, year of eruption, volcanic explosivity index:

• Vesuvius, Italy, 79, 5
• Huaynaputina, Peru, 1600, 6
• Tambora, Indonesia, 1815, 7
• Krakatoa, Indonesia, 1883, 6
• Santa Maria, Guatemala, 1902, 6
• Mount St Helens, Washington (USA), 1980, 5
• Pinatuba, Philippines, 1991, 6
• Eyjafjallajokull, Iceland, 2010, 4

This book will likely be quickly remaindered, and will be sold throughout English-speaking airports in the softcover edition.

The Peloponnesian War, Donald Kagan, c. 2003

Donald Kagan: Sterling Professor of Classics and History at Yale University. His four-volume History of the Peloponnesian War is the leading scholarly work on the subject. So, I guess here he condensed it to one volume for the "general" public.

The introduction begins: "For almost three decades at the end of the fifth century B. C., the Athenian Empire fought the Spartan Alliance in a terrible war that changed the Greek world and its civilization forever."

As I read that, and having just completed a bit of reading on the Persian war, it dawned on me that for memory purposes, one could argue the Greek / Persian was much like our own Revolutionary War; and then the Peloponnesian War much like our own US Civil War.

The introduction continues: "Only a half-century before [the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War] the united Greeks, led by Sparta and Athens, had fought off an assault by the mighty Persian Empire, preserving their independence by driving Persia's armies and navies out of Europe and recovering the Greek cities on the coasts of Asia Minor from its grasp."

Even the Persian army and the Persian navy could be easily compared to the Red Coats, the British Army, and the British Navy, second to none at the time of the American revolution. Perhaps now I might remember the sequence of events and the importance of these events in the Near East.

The author compares the Peloponnesian War with World War I in terms of devastation and importance.  (In the Peloponnesian War, Sparta "won," and replaced Athenian democracy with Thirty Tyrants in a puppet government, subservient to Sparta.)

***********************************

Most important source, by far, of our knowledge of the war: the history written by war's contemporary and participant -- Thucydides. His account ended mid-sentence, seven years before the end of the war.

There is way to much to write but this is THE reference book for the Peloponnesian War.

It has an introduction, seven parts, and a conclusion.

Part I: The Road To War

Chapter One: the great rivalry, 479 - 439

Part II: Pericles' War

Starts with chapter five.

Part III: New Strategies

Starts with chapter eleven.

Part IV: The False Peace

Starts with chapter sixteen (the peace unravels, 421 - 420)

Part V: The Disaster in Sicily

Starts with chapter twenty (the decision, 416 - 415)

Part VI: Revolutions in the Empire and in Athens

Starts with chapter twenty-six (after the disaster, 413 - 412)

Part VII: The Fall of Athens

Starts with chapter thirty-three (the restoration, 410 - 409)

Conclusion

The author compares the Peloponnesian War with World War I in terms of devastation and importance.

Seven Pillars Of Wisdom: A Triumph, T. E. Lawrence, First Anchor Books Edition, c. July 199

For some time, off and on, I have wanted to read, or at least see if I wanted to read, T. E. Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom. It should have been easy to find, but for some reason I never ran across it. I probably wasn't looking too hard. Then, while looking for the new (2013) biography of T. E. Lawrence I spotted the soft cover book on the shelves of the South Lake, Texas, public library.

I found it incredibly easy to read, and incredibly interesting. It is too immense to take many notes, but a few things that catch my interest might be recorded here. 

c. 1926, 1935 by Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc.

Author's Preface
/s T.E.S.
Cranwell, 15.8.26

3/4 page, a portion:

"Mr Geoffrey Dawson persuaded All Souls College to give me leisure, in 1919 - 1920, to write about the Arab Revolt. Sir Herbert Baker let me live and work in his Westminster houses.

The book so written passed in 1921 into proof: where it was fortunate in the friends who criticized it. Particularly it owes its thanks to Mr. and Mrs. Bernard Shaw for countless suggestions of great value and diversity: and for all the present semicolons. "

Contents

Synopsis (particularly good). Explains why there is no index: "Halfway through the labour of an index to this book, I recalled the practice of my ten years' study of history; and realized I had never used the index* of a book fit to read. Who would insult his Decline and Fall, by consulting it just upon a specific point." He says more. *An index has been added to this edition.

Synopsis: Book I through Book X

Epilogue: "Why the taking of Damascus ended my efforts in Syria (p. 661)." Particularly interesting.

Illustrations: many

Preface by A. W. Lawrence: ostensibly his brother Arnold, but written in the first person to suggest T. E. Lawrence, in fact, wrote it, and signed "T. E. Shaw," the name he used in 1923 after leaving the RAF.

Includes 1.5 page of questions (from publisher) and answers from "A. W. Lawrence" on inconsistency of place names and names of persons. Examples follow:

"Q: Slip 28. The Bisaita is also spelt Biseita. A: Good.

"Q: Slip 53. 'Meleager, the immoral poet'. I have put 'immortal' poet, but the author may mean immoral after all. A: Immorality I know. Immorality I cannot judge. As you please: Meleager will not sue us for libel."

Again, signed by "A. W. Lawrence."

Introductory Chapter: was chapter 1 at one time, then removed, then re-inserted. Finally left in but did not want to re-number all the chapters for the "nth" time.

Postscript  to the introductory chapter, also signed "A. W. L."

Then the book begins: SEVEN PILLARS OF WISDOM

An introduction, a short page, "Foundations of Revolt, Chapters I to VII.

Chapter I

"The Arab was nature continent; and the use of universal marriage had nearly abolished irregular courses in his tribes. The public women of the rare settlements we encountered in our months of wandering would have been nothing to our numbers, even had their raddled meat been palatable to a man of healthy parts. In horror of such sordid commerce our youths began indifferently to slake one another's few needs in their own clean bodies -- a cold convenience that, by comparison, seemed sexless and pure. Later, some began to justify this sterile precess, and swore that friends quivering together in the yielding sand with intimate hot limbs in supreme embrace, found there hidden in the darkness a sensual co-efficient of the mental passion which was welding our souls and spirits in one flaming effort. Several, thirsting to punish appetites they could not wholly prevent, took a savage pride in degrading the body, and offered themselves fiercely in any habit which promised physical pain or filth." -- p. 30

Later,

"A man who gives himself to be a possession of aliens leads a Yahoo life, having bartered his soul to a brute-master." -- p. 31

Chapter II (geography and population)

Chapter III (Arabic thinking, religiosity)

Chapter IV (the Turkish Revolution)

Chapter V (the beginnings of the Arab Revolution)

The position of the Sherif of Mecca had long been anomalous. The title of 'Sherif' implied descent from the prophet Mohammed through his daughter Fatima, and Hassan, her elder son. Authentic Sherifs were inscribed on the family tree - an immense roll preserved at Mecca, in custody of the Emir of Mecca, the elected Sherif of Sherifs, supposed to be the senior and noblest of all. The prophet's family had held temporal rule in Mecca for the last nine hundred years, and counted some two thousand persons.

The old Ottoman Governments regarded this clan of manticratic peers with a mixture of reverence and distrust. Since they were too strong to be destroyed, the Sultan salved his dignity by solemnly confirming their Emir in place. This empty approval acquired dignity by lapse of time, until the new holder began to feel that it added a final seal to his election. At last the Turks found that the needed the Hejaz under their unquestioned sway as part of the stage furniture for their new pan-Islamic notion. The fortuitous opening of the Suez Canal enabled them to garrison the Holy Cities. They projected the Hejaz Railway, and increased Turkish influence among the tribes by money, intrigue, and armed expeditions. 

As the [Turkish Ottoman] Sultan grew stronger there he ventured to assert himself more and more alongside the Sherif, even in Mecca itself, and upon occasion ventured to depose a Sherif too magnificent for his views, and to appoint a successor from a rival family of the clan in hopes of winning the usual advantages form dissension. Finally, Abdul Hamid took away some of the family to Constantinople into honourable captivity. Amongst these was Hussein ibn Ali, the future ruler, who was held a prisoner for nearly eighteen years. He took the opportunity to provide his sons -- Ali, Abdulla, Feisal, and Zeid -- with the modern education and experience which afterwards enabled them to lead the Arab armies to success.

Chapter 6 (the Revolt, a new factor) If the revolt was to succeed, a new "factor" was needed to counter the Turks. The Arabs needed assistance.

Nearly all of us rallied round Clayton, the chief of Intelligence, civil and military in Egypt. ...

The first of us was Ronald Storrs, Oriental Secretary of the Residency, the most brilliant Englishman in the Near East, and subtly efficient ... Storrs sowed what we reaped, and was always first, and the great man among us. ...

George Lloyd entered our number. He gave us confidence, and with his knowledge of money, proved a sure guide through the subways of trade and politics, and a prophet upon the future of the Middle East. ...

Then there was this imaginative advocate of unconvincing world-movements, Mark Sykes: also a bundle of prejudices, intuitions, half-sciences. His ideas were of the outside; and he lacked patience to test his materials before choosing his style of building. ...

Not a wild man, but Mentor to all of us was Hogarth, our father confessor and adviser, who broughtus the parallels and lessons of history, and moderation, and courage. To the outsiders he was peacemaker (I was all claws and teeth, and had a devil). ...

We called ourselves 'Intrusive' as a band; for we meant to break into the accepted halls of English foreign policy ....

The 'Intrusive' band began to work upon all the chiefs, far and near.

Sir Henry McMahon, High Commissioner in Egypt, was, of course, our first effort...
Others, like Wemyss, Neil Malcolm, Wingate, supported us in their pleasure at seeing the war turned constructive. Their advocacy confirmed in Lord Kitchener the favourable impression hehad derived years before when Sherif Abdulla appealed to him in Egypt; and so McMahon at last achieved our foundation stone, the understanding with the Sherif of Mecca.

Chapter VII (how Lawrence strategizes his removal from Cairo as a mapmaker and to join Storrs (who the Brits in Cairo also did not like) in the Arab Bureau. This was a key move, if Lawrence were to lead the Arab Revolt.

An introduction, a short page, "The Discovery of Feisal," Chapters VIII to XVI.

Chapter VIII (to the Arab Bureau; permission to join Feisal to protect Mecca) The Lawrence party sails down the calm Red Sea to Jidda. Colonel Wilson, British representative to the new Arab state, sent his launch to meet the ship. On shore they met Ruhi, Consular Oriental assistant, whose old patron was Storrs, great friends still. Abdullah arrives on a white mare, flushed with his success at Taif, and happy. Discussed the dismal state of affairs. Abdullah noted that his failure to cut the Hejaz Railway, the Turks had been able to collect transport and supplies for the reinforcement of Medina. The Turks were on their way to capture Mecca; Abdullah said, "over his dead body." Storrs instrumental in getting the Sherif's permission to join Feisal in Jebel Subh.

Chapter IX 







 

Idle Chatter on Literature

[Note: this note was written a long, long time ago. I don't remember when but it would be easy to find out. However, I left it in draft stage, and only posted it today. But it was written a long time ago.]

My laptop is about to run out energy; the battery is down to 17 percent. An iPad with 17 percent battery life left would last almost two hours. The MacBook Pro might last another twenty minutes. And no outlet where I am to charge the battery.

But I couldn't leave without this short note. Yesterday I didn't get the chance to read the weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal (the older daughter had a swim meet a couple of hours distant in driving time -- only a few miles away for a Canadian goose, but the meet was in Salem, Massachusetts, on one of the last weekends before Halloween, perhaps the biggest tourist month of the year for Salem; think witches).

So, today, before the start of the second day of that same swim meet, I will read the WSJ -- all the more so because Starbucks accidentally gave me a "grande" instead of a "tall" which represents about twice as much coffee, three times more than I need. But that's another story for another day.

Back to the WSJ. I used to know some friends (okay, one) who subscribed to Playboy Magazine for the stories. That's the way it is with me. No, not Playboy Magazine, but the WSJ. I subscribe to the WSJ, not for the business news, but for the incredibly good writing, the weekend edition, and the fourth section each day (in that order).

This weekend's issue might be one of the best in a  long time. Or maybe like meat loaf it just seems better because it's a day older and I've been looking forward to it twenty-four hours.

The long, long lead story is fantastic -- read this story if you want to know my reading habits: My 6,128 favorite books, by Joe Queenan. Fortunately he only lists about 100 books. Most of those were books he did not like, so he must have read more than 6,128. You know that any article that mentions Middlemarch in the first few paragraphs is going to be a great piece of reading.

Paul Johnson's five favorite biographies: Macaulay, Sir Arthur Bryant; Ulysses S. Grant, Michael Korda; Lincoln at Gettysburg, Garry Wills; Rossetti: His Life and Works, Evelyn Waugh; and, A Portrait of Charles Lamb, David Cecil. The authors are relatively unfamiliar to me; the lives they have chosen to write about I know very, very well, except for Charles Lamb.

And finally, before I run out of battery (now 13%): How the French Invented Love, Marilyn Yalon. Four hundred pages of what appears to be an exceptionally interesting book. I don't know if this was planned by the WSJ editors or if it just happened, but earlier in the section there is an essay on "the new face of infidelity" by Peggy Drexler. Her findings: infidelity is no longer an exclusive domain for men (it never was, but the statistics are starting to even out): 23 percent and 19 percent. You can google the article to see what the numbers refer to. Something tells me the former number is way, way low; the latter number is low, but hard to say by how much. It will be interesting to see what a similar essay reports 15 years from now. My hunch is that the definition of infidelity will have changed. See Marilyn Yalon's book review.

And now I must sign off with less than 10% of my battery power left. 

Larwence In Arabia, Scott Anderson, c. 2013 -- IN PROGRESS

Full title: Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East, Scott Anderson, c. 2013.

Is "modern Middle East" an oxymoron?

A reader recommended this book. I found it on the new book shelf at the public library in South Lake, Texas. I won't get around to reading it for awhile.

It appears the author is a contemporary American writer.

Introduction

The book starts with the two pages surrounding the event in which 30-year-old T. E. Lawrence was to be knighted - an incredible beginning. 

PART I

Chapter 1: Playboys in the Holy Land

Starts with the coincidental meeting in 1914 between two Americans, William Yale and Rudolf McGovern, agents of the Standard Oil Company of New York, and three Brits, including T. E. Lawrence in British Army uniform, in Syria.

Chapter 2: A Very Unusual Type

Flashback to early days about the two Americans and T. E. Lawrence. This chapter convinces me I need to buy the book for my own library; I am reading it in the South Lake, Texas, public library.

Chapter 3: Another And Another Nice Thing

1913: T. E. Lawrence as an archaeologist. Yale in Anatolia.

Chapter 4: To The Last Million

1914: warning signs of new weapons of war had been missed by the Brits

Chapter 5: A Despicable Mess

1915: T. E. Lawrence officially in the Mideast.

Chapter 6: The Keepers of Secrets

1915: continuation of same.

Chapter 7: Treachery

Story of the Brit, Sykes.

Turkey needs lubricating oil for its army.

PART II

Chapter 8: The Battle Joined

October, 1916: Ronald Storrs and T. E. Lawrence to Egypt.

Chapter 9: The Man Who Would Be Kingmaker

October, 1916: to Yenbo.

The chapter ends with T. E. Lawrence to be sent back to Arabia as a temporary liaison officer to Faisal ibn Hussein.

Chapter 10: Neatly In The Void

November, 1916.

March on Wejh. 

Chapter 11: A Mist Of Deceits

January, 1917.

Yale, Woodrow Wilson.

Chapter 12: An Audacious Scheme

April, 1917.

The background to Aqaba. The chapter ends, "It was with such thoughts that, two days later, Lawrence set out on the long and dangerous trek toward Aqaba. For what would soon become one of the most audacious and celebrated military exploits of World War I, his accompanying "army" consisted of fewer than forty-five Arab warriors."

Chapter 13: Aqaba

The Lady And Her Monster, Roseanne Montillo, c. 2013

Full title: The Lady and Her Monster: A Tale of Dissections, Real-Life Dr Frankensteins, and the Creation of Mary Shelley's Masterpiece. The author has her MFA from Emerson College in Massachusetts.

I probably read the 1831 edition of Frankenstein; will now read the 1818 edition. I have ordered the Norton Critical edition which includes the 1818 edition. 

Prologue

Chapter 1: The Spark of Life

August 24, 1806 -- Mary Godwin (future mother of Mary Shelley) and her younger stepsister, Jane Clairmont (later Claire Clairmont); on Skinner Street, London, listening in on father's dinner party
Father: William Godwin
Samuel Taylor Coleridge in attendance; reciting verses from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, published 1798
Others who had attended similar dinner parties: Humphry Davy, Wm Wordsworth, Charles Lamb
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner had awakened popular fascination with the macabre
A decade later, Mary used similar imagery in Frankenstein: the Modern Prometheus

Mary Godwin (future mother of Mary Shelley), b. 1797, London
Her mother: Mary Wollstonecraft
Father: Wm Godwin
Mary Wollstonecraft: died of puerperal fever (retained placenta) eleven days after giving birth to Mary; age 36 at death; the first and most influential feminist and author of A Vindication of the Rights of Women
Mary Godwin would become Mary Shelley
Wm and Mary met at dinner party to honor Thomas Paine, who had just published The Rights of Man, 1794
Mary had proposed a menage-a-trois relationship with Henry Fuseli (18 years her senior) and his wife; rejected.
Mary in Paris; alone; fell in love with American Gilbert Imlay; daughter Fanny in 1795
Mary, alone with daughter, to London. Imlay abandons her. Depressed, she jumps into Thames to commit suicide; survives. No longer depressed.
Reconnects with Wm Godwin.
Becomes pregnant with 2nd child; marries Wm, despite his beliefs that marriage was wrong; 1797
Dies in childbirth, 1797.

1801: Wm seduced by and marries Mrs Jane Clairmont, the wicked stepmother
A new son: Wm Godwin (junior); the family lived near the prison gallows; much written on crowds to watch the hangings

Godwin met Humphry Davy -- 1799 -- introduced by Samuel Taylor Coledrige -- Godwin delved deeply into mysteries of chemistry.

All wanted to "get high" -- Pneumatic Institution -- Godwin, Davy, Gregory Watt (son of famous engineer James Watt), Davies Giddy, Thomas Beddoes

NO2 -- laughing gas -- hallucinogenic
Pneumatic Institute knew of Luigi Galvani, frog dissection and Galvanism

Chapter 2: Waking The Dead

1786: Luigi Galvani -- dissections

Italy: where medical dissection probably began (at this time, at least)

Electricity, muscle contractions

Alessandro Volta -- 1792; disproved much of Galvani's work.

Battery: Zn -- brine -- Cu

Galvinsim on the severely depressed (electroshock therapy): Giovanni Aldini

Chapter 3: Making Monsters

Aldini: arrives in London, 1802

London: at the cusp of a medical revolution. Hospitals teeming with doctors and surgeons; experimenting on the living as well as the dead.

James Graham, Edinburgh, early 20's in Philadelphia where he learned of Ben Franklin's kite experiments. Temple of Health; delivered bolts of electricity, 1779; the Temple of Health considered a bordello for the rich; Aldini had ot be more circumspect in his clinic so it would not take on aspects of the Temple of Health.

Corpses: in England, the gallows -- the only legal source from which to collect corpses

Resurrectionist gangs sprang up. Ben Crouch -- the most famous gang leader at the time.
Diary of a Resurrectionist, Joseph Naples, chronicled grave-stealing, 1811 -1812

Royal Humane Society in response to experiments on the living, 1774. Initially called the Society for the Recovery of Persons Apparently Drowned.

Giovanni Aldini: found his perfect corpse, 1802; famous homicide case; the George Foster family homicide.

1836: Charles Dickens -- visits prison of Newgate -- describes what George Foster was probably experiencing.

1752: Murder Act of 1752: added dissection as crime punishable by hanging death.

Murderes on the gallows were sent to anatomists -- family of murderers forbidden to prevent this (p. 83); punishment was 7 years exile on "king's plantation" in America.

Chapter 4: A Meeting Of Two Minds

1502: Elisa jumped off the Devil's Bridge near Lake Zurich

Her son: Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim --> Paracelsus --> revolutionized the discipline of alchemy.

French Revolution left in its wake: a) Industrial Revolution; and, b) the beginning of the scientific revolution. At this very time, the debate over what it meant to be human; or could electricity be used create man? The pamphlets and books were numerous; Mary Shelly was reading them. (p. 94)

As a teenager, what inspired Shelley? Giovanni Aldini, Luigi Galvani, Humphry Davy, Paracelsus, Cornelius Agrippa (accused of consorting with devils), Simon Magnus (Simon the Sorcerer).

Shelley's work begins with references to Agrippa, Paracelsus, Magnus.

Paracelsus:the first to use the term homunculus -- animated being he gave life to -- the prototype for what Victor Frankenstein was to create.

Paracelsus: an alchemist.

The town of Ingolstadt (Paracelsus) and Ingolstadt is where Victor Frankenstein coincidentally attends University of Ingolstadt.

Jewish-created creatures: golems. (First thought: Gollum, The Lord of the Rings).

1812: an impressionable, idealistic young man, Percy Shelley writes a letter to Wm Godwin (he was cult figure for many young men); he had read all the books of Albertus Magnus and Paracelsus.

Shelley: six months at Oxford before expelled; fascinated with science, chemistry; esp electricity; spoke of powers of thunder and electricity.

Cavollo: 1793; brought Galvani's work to England.

Shelley preoccupied with the land of the dead.

Shelley suffered debilitating waking dreams; took laudanum to quell them; tinctura thebaica was a derivative of opium; fashionable during Shelley's lifetime.

Most alchemists dabbled with opium; the plant Papaver somniferum.

Paracelsus derived the name laudanum from the Latin laudare "to praise."

Description of Shelley: schizophrenic.

Cousin Thomas Medwin shared room with him at Oxford. Once saved Shelley from jumping out of wind while "crazy."

1814: meeting between Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Godwin (possibly first met in 1812, but no record).

[She was born 1797, so about 17 years old in 1814.]

Mary had been sent to live with family friend in 1812, to Dundee, Scotland; stepmother and Mary could not get along. At Dundee, Mary learned all about whaling industry; would have heard tales of frigid Arctic Sea.

1814: Mary returns home, to Skinner Street, London.

Three women living in house where Percy Shelley practically a constant guest. The three girls, Fanny, Mary, and Jane (Claire) Clairmont). All had a crust on Percy; Percy only interested in the smart and clever Mary who shared similar ideas, thoughts at he (Percy).  He was called "Mad Shelley."

Mary often went to her mother's gravesite at St Pancras; Shelley would have loved it there, "the land of the dead."

Only one thing stood in way of Mary's love for Shelley: he was married and had a toddler, Ianthe (p. 114). 

Percy and Mary elope to Switzerland, 1814 -- at their side as none other than Jane (Claire) Clairmont.

A very long story by Mark Twain, "In Defence of Harriet Shelley" -- a long article, p. 117.

Chapter 5: Eloping To The Mainland

Percy Shelley, Mary Godwin, step-sister Jane Clairmont flee Skinner Street, middle of the summaer
Later he even asked Harriet (his wife) to join them; she died 1816, I believe)

Mary probably initiated the idea to elope; eloped July 27.

Impregnated at St Pancras cemetery? (p. 127)

Walked across France; sickly donkey.

Mary's Frankenstein astounds readers with its detail for the natural world - she gained that on walking across France.

To Switzerland.

Mary began collecting local tales around Lake Lucerne.

Ran out of money -- August 28 -- boarded a boat on the Rhine to return home -- the legend of Lorelie.

The author mentions Sylvia Plath in conjunction with Lorelei, p. 133.

September 2: reached Mannheim -- village of Nieder-Beerbach; in the distant, infamous Burg Frankenstein! -- p. 134. Near Nieder-Beerbach takes a 3-hour without Claire (Jane)

Then the story of Frankenstein name (p. 134).

Vlad the Impaler (p. 135). Bram Stoker's Dracula.

The story of Johanna Konrad Dippel -- related to the Frankensteins not by birth but by living there (p. 137)

Dippel: alchemy again; apparently pretty successful.

Dippel --> medicine at University of Leyden, Holland; U of Leyden, the oldest university in the Netherlands, founded by Prince Wm and Mary in 1575; Leyden's Jar -- invented there in mid-1700's.

Dippel's link with the occult, electricity, and Frankenstein.

Unknown if Percy Shelley and Mary Godwin had heard of the infamous alchemist Johann Dippel -- never mentioned in either of their diaries.

Back on the boat -- after a 3-hour excursion.

Chapter 6: My Hideous Progeny

April 10 - 11, 1815: Mount Tambora, volcano on Indonesia island of Sumbawa begins to erupt. Heard in Singaport -- 1816 became The Year Without Summer -- as far away as Canada as well as New England -- frost persisted well into summer.

Mary and Percy returned to England, Sept, 1814 -- their reputations tarnished. Mary was ostracized for destroying a marriage. She also learned she was pregnant.

But there was no official attachment between Percy and Mary. He was still legally married to Harriet Westbrook. The child would have no legal rights.

Jane (Claire) refused to move back to Skinner Street; initially an unwelcome guest at Percy and Mary's home (but that would change).

Jane morbidly afraid of ghosts, supernatural; would hide in Percy and Mary's bed (when they were in it).

Feb 22, 1815: Mary's baby born; died March 6; full-term but sickly.

Shelley dx'd with consumption (TB) and expected not to live more than a few months.

Claire and Percy spent more and more time together, alone. Mary found friendship with Percy's old friend, Thomas Jeffferson Hogg.

Hogg and Mary become very close. Intimate?

Percy insisted on Mary and Hogg's intimacy, probably because he and Claire had become sexually intimate during Mary's pregnancy.

Claire set out to seduce a man more well known that Percy --> the poet George Gordon Noel Byron -- eventually Lord Byron.

The story of Lord Byron (p. 154) -- a lascivious, shocking madman. Eventually married Annabella Milbanke.

Byron: psychotic; due to incessant drinking coupled with ferocious anorexia. Highly self-conscious of limp -- a congenital defect. Walked on toes to hide limp; made him appear taller; almost no one noticed his limp.

Habit of telling tall tales.

1815: Lady Byron gives birth to Augusta Ada -- named after Byron's sister -- barely a month later.

Annabella left Byron -- no explanation given, but she probably learned of his incestuous affair with his sister.

It was during this time that he began receiving letters from Claire. Letters soon turned sexual.

Byron plans to elope to the continent, perhaps Switzerland (p. 160).

Claire wants to follow Byron to the continent.

January 24, 1816 -- Mary gives birth to William -- named after father. Shelley hounded by debt collectors; leaves for Italy with Mary. Claire is still an unwelcome guest and a nuisance. Claire wanted to go to Switzerland, not Italy. They all compromise: Lake Geneva.

Mary, Shelley, Claire, and baby William -- will go as one group.

Separately Byron is also planning to leave.

Byron's personal physician, the young, naive, vain Dr John William Polidori (p. 161) (one of youngest physicians ever; Edinburgh trained). He wanted a literary career; pushed into medicine by his father. Commissioned by a publisher, John Murray, to keep a journal of his travels with Byron, "Journal of a Journey Through Flanders." Few knew he was keeping a journal, not even Shelley who would eventually become a subject of the journal.

Journal: heavily convoluted history -- April 24, 1816 - December, 1816, when Polidori abandoned it.

"It was, it is, an interesting read because Polidori's diary has remained one of the only written records, albeit in short passages, of the famous ghost story competition that gave birth to Frankenstein, or so Mary Shelley said it did." -- p. 163. Meticulous, if not always flattering notes.

Unfortunately the original was destroyed after being rewritten and strongly edited by Polidori's sister Charlotte Lydia Polidori, p. 163.

In Switzerland, Byron gets a note from Claire -- they had also arrived (Bryon made sure everyone knew how to reach him). He id not want to see Claire -- felt pestered.

The story of Fanny, begins p. 165.

Weather at Lake Geneva, 1816, miserable.

Settled on Maison Chapins, a short walk from Villa Diodati, where Byron set up residence.

Byron drawn to Shelley -- two poets, p. 168.

Bryon / half-sister Augusta -- two children. Mary felt abandoned by Shelley.

Background in medicine, science, occult, anatomy, etc., that led to talk that led to the book.

Poldori medical school thesis, "Oneirodynia" -- waking-dream -- to which Mary attributed the arrival of her story.

June 15 - June 17, 1816 -- the year of no summer -- ghost story began to develop.

Chapter 7: Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus

June, 1816: Claire told Percy she was pregnant; unclear when Mary was told. Lord Byron upset; he knew it would cost him money. 

End of summer, 1816: group leaving Lake Geneva.

Happy to see Polidori leave.

Plans for Claire to leave her child with relatives; Claire to be "the aunt" to her child; could see child whenever she wanted without raising suspicion.

Polidori suicide, 1821.

Autumn, 1816: Percy, Mary, their baby William, and Claire return to London (September).

Claire sequestered/pregnant in Bath, England.

Mary continued writing her story.

Fanny commits suicide September, 1816, Bristol.

Mary, Percy, Claire -- secluded in mourning.

December 10, 1816: Harriet Westwood, suicide, in Serpentine River.

Mary and Percy marry 20 days after the suicide. Shelley -- intent to take custody of his two children by Harriet -- Ianthe and Charles.

December 30, 1816: Mary and Percy marry.  Married at St Mildred's Church, London; Wm and Mrs Godwin are witnesses. Mr Godwin happy for his daughter.

January 12, 1817: Claire gives birth to a baby girl.

By spring, 1817, Frankenstein first draft. Needed to find a publisher.

End of summer, 1817, a publisher found. Mystery of authorship; published anonymously; not unusual in that day for women to publish anonymously. Reviewers: no one suspected a woman had written it; suspected Godwin or Shelley (technically correct: Mary was both a Godwin and a Shelley).

Claire Clairmont -- only one who expressed the significance of a woman having written it.

Chapter 8: The Anatomy Act

August 27, 1818, Alexander Love, in his late 70's walking with grandson, in Glasgow; elder was murdered by drunken thug Clydesdale, who also severely injured the grandson; Clydesdale sentenced to death by hanging and then body to dissection.

Clydesdale more afraid of dissection than death; tried to commit suicide in prison; barely saved; hung, and body to anatomists.

[1828: Edinburgh, 16 residents killed, maybe more, bodies sold to renowned anatomist Dr Robert Knox; killing people for their corpses.

One gang: Mr Burke, Mr Hare, Ms M'Dougal, Ms Hare (p. 217). Led to Anatomy Act of 1832 (p. 234).

Chapter 9: A Sea Change

Mary Shelley in Naples.

Arrived 1818; after other stays in Italy.

Mary, Percy, and Claire settled in the Chiaia district -- the most famous and desirable area of Naples. Swiss nursemaid Elise for Mary and Percy's children (plural), the ever-present Claire, and her daughter, Allegra.

Cook: Paolo Foggi.

Cook Paolo and nursemaid Elise --> a baby; the three disappear; Mary's most recent infant daughter Clara died in Venice a few months earlier.

Upon death of Clara, Percy rushes to courthouse; birth certificate for baby with his name on it and Mary's; possibly/probably Paolo/Elise's baby --> Elena Adelaide -- but in any event, the baby died June 10, 1819.

Wow -- story of New Englander/Salem, Massachusetts -- Edward Silsbee -- in 1870's learns that Claire Clairmont is still alive, living in Italy. Edward sails to Italy; strikes up relationship with Claire who is eager to tell all; his notes are in the Peabody Essex Museum. Silsbee - Claire (she very, very old) many conversations; he says Claire said she was the mother of that child by Percy; not Paolo/Elise. Mystery still to be solved.

1822: Mary -- living at Casa Magni, Italy, on Gulf of La Spezia, for the summer; she hates Casa Magni; Percy loves it.

[From Romantic Circles: On 25 April 1822, Shelley was in Pisa when he received two simultaneous pieces of news: Allegra, Claire's daughter by Byron, had died of typhus at Bagnacavallo; and Edward Williams had discovered a dilapidated but nonetheless habitable house for rent near the fishing village of Lerici, on the Gulf of Spezia. Worried about the effect of the child's death on Claire, and eager to leave Pisa (he had been involved in the attack on a Pisan dragoon resulting in Byron's banishment), Shelley decided that a change of scene was just the thing. Within a day and a half, he had seen to moving arrangements, packed Mary, Claire (who had not yet been told about Allegra) and his son Percy Florence into a coach, and was himself aboard a luggage boat for Lerici.]

June 16, 1822: a miscarriage.

The friendship between Trelawny and Shelley, Pisa, detailed.

Trelawny hires his friend Captain David Roberts to build Shelley a boat.

Byron re-enters the picture -- also living in Italy at the time (out-lived his consumption).

Shelley -- did not know how to swim. His boat, the Don Juan. Shelley asked Trelawny to get him a bottle of Prussic Acid (how Polidori committed suicide); would pay anything for highly concentrated bottle of acid.

Mary was still quite depressed.

Plan: Shelley and Williams to sail the Don Juan across the Gulf of La Spezia, located between Genoa and Pisa on the Ligurian Sea.

Trelawny to follow in Lord Byron's boat, the Bolivar. Trelawny was delayed.

Shelley and Wms decide to set out alone -- eager to return to Mary at Casa Magni on other side of the gulf.

Depart at 3:00 p.m. -- unusual for such a late departure, by anyone.

Trelawny waits frantically for Shelley/Wms.

A week later, decomposing bodies near Via Reggio.

Shelley remains to Protestant cemetery in Rome. Wms remains to England. Both cremated for health reasons. Funeral pyre at Leghorn.

Hints that a larger boat had rammed/sunk the Don Juan.

Wm Godwin learned of Shelley's death not from Mary but form his friend Leigh Hunt.

Byron much depressed.

New boat, the Hercules; much more than he could handle.

Died after horse riding, April 18, 1824.

Body to England --

Mary back to England. Mary learns of Frankenstein's success; the book has taken on a life of its own.

Still, no one knew the author.

Mary writes The Last Man, 1826, dystopian literature, set in 21st century.

Reworked and annotated Frankenstein several times -- 1821 -- several corrections to the text; a copy of that corrected copy in the Morgan Library in New York.

Most famous new edition was the 1831 edition, and most controversial one.

By 1831, her life had changed considerably -- three of her children had died; so had her husband (drowning), Lord Byron (natural causes), and Polidor (suicide). [Also Harriet -- suicide, and Fanny - suicide.]

Idealism of youth had passed.

See difference between 1818 and 1831 versions.

1818: Viktor Frankenstein decides outcome.
1831: fate decides outcome. The monster is not to blame for his actions; he is simply a puppet, not entirely to blame.

Mary was explaining her life was determined by fate; it was not her fault bad things happened to those around her. Much guilt re: Fanny, Harreit, etc.

She used 1831 book to explain how a young girl could think to write such a book.

Epilogue

The story of Alistair Cooke's cremation/dissection in 2004.

Mary died, 1851, age 53, possibly a brain tumor, at her home in Chester Square.

Stonehenge: A New Interpretation Of Prehistoric Man And The Cosmos, John North, c. 1996; IN PROGRESS

I first found this book while browsing the shelves at the South Lake, TX, public library. It's a very difficult book, very, very detailed.

I have ordered a remaindered copy through a reseller through Amazon. It will arrive in a few days.