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It is necessary at the outset to provide, for the first time, a comprehensive description of exactly what the Frankenstein manuscripts consist of. It is rather surprising, given the two decades that they have been in the Bodleian, that nobody has put that basic information into print. The Bodleian designated the 1974 deposit Dep. c. 477/1, and the 1976 deposit Dep. c. 534/1 and Dep. c. 534/2. Dep. c. 477/1 and Dep. c. 534/1 are respectively Mary's Volume I and Volume II of the Last Draft. However those conceptual two volumes do not coincide with the two notebooks (one which contained light blue Continental paper, the other larger off-white British) in which the surviving draft was mainly written. Both notebooks were apparently intact at the time of writing and the leaves subsequently detached; the covers of both notebooks are now lost. The pagination of conceptual Volume II commences in the midst of the notebook that contained Continental paper. After the 77 surviving Continental leaves (60 Volume I leaves followed by 17 Volume II leaves), Volume II continues on the surviving 75 larger British leaves. Except for two rogue leaves described below, the Fair Copy fragments (Dep. c. 534/2) are written on leaves of British paper (bound at the time of writing with covers that are now lost) from what seem to have been two identical notebooks of a third type. They were probably modest exercise-type notebooks.[2]
In describing the manuscripts below, for ease of later reference, I have distinguished eight "natural" parts and identified them as A, A1, B, Cr, and D for the Last Draft; and, in the case of the Fair Copy fragments, DM, DP, and DPM. In relating these parts, and all manuscript quotations, to the
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