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The Last Draft — Volume I
A: The 121 pages (61 leaves) Mary numbered 41 to 161 (accidentally skipping 52, numbering two pages 58, and concluding with a blank page 161) (Rieger 30.13 ["servants had any request to make"] — 97.16 ["he thus began his tale."]). Assuming that all but the last leaf of the first two quires are lost, these surviving 61 leaves originally constituted the last leaf of quire II through to leaf eight (now apparently the sixth leaf since leaves two and three are missing) of the originally ten-leaved quire VIII (only quires V and VII contained twelve leaves) of a bound notebook of Continental paper. As usual Mary writes on both sides of each leaf. The light blue leaves (18.6 X 27 cm) of parts A and B, and probably Cr, all derive from the same notebook; its leaves were separated at some point after their being written on. The leaves originated as a quarto sheet; consequently the two watermarks — "D | ADIVONNE" and a bell — are split across the reconstructed folds. On each page a left hand margin of varying widths has been created by a pencilled line. A number of Percy's inserts and suggestions appear in these margins (as they do in the ruled and unruled margins of parts B — D). Taking account of the deducible pages 1 — 40, this part is sectioned by Mary into 15 chapters (with two chapter 7's).[3]
Bruce C. Barker-Benfield's reconstruction of the notebook quires indicates that leaves two and three of quire VIII (four pages before leaf 153 [3 altered from 7]/154) are missing because they were cancelled at the time of writing (Barker-Benfield 4 — 5). Following nine cancelled lines at the top of page 153 [3 altered from 7], a revision of the four and a bit cancelled pages (corresponding to Rieger 93.21 ["it rose"] — 97.16) continues through to the top of page 160 (approximately seven manuscript pages which deal with Frankenstein's meeting with the monster prior to the monster's central narrative).
A1: Insert material that appears on six unnumbered (by Mary) off-white pages larger than the Part A pages. Inserted at points on pages 43 and 44 of Part A above, it corresponds to Rieger 32.15 ("Natural philosophy is the genius") — 35.2 ("their place in my mind.") and to Rieger 35.17 ("I eagerly inquired") — 36.19 ("this various literature."). (Some of the first insert and all of the second were deleted in the revised 1831 edition.) A Bodleian librarian, the late Margaret Crum, in foliating in pencil all but one of the Volume I manuscript leaves (the accidental exception is Mary's pages 91 — 92), numbered these insert leaves 1, 2, 3, and 3v and then foliated Mary's Part A leaves (minus blank page 161) as 4 — 62, thereby giving the accidental impression that the insert material was written before the beginning of Part A. Part A1 must in fact have been written at some point while Part A was being written, or at some later stage of the drafting/revision process.[4] Part A1 consists of a folded sheet, a bifolium (with a rectangular portion torn from the bottom
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