The Fair Copy Fragments
My concern in this article is only incidentally with the Fair Copy (see
foot-note 23 below) but for the sake of completeness a description of the
Fair Copy fragments (which transcribe the latter portion of Part D above)
follows. Unlike the very sketchy picture that we have regarding exactly when
Mary began writing the Last Draft and when she finished, and in what order,
the dates between which she (and Percy) transcribed the Fair Copy are
recorded in her journal as 18 April — 13 May 1817 (I:168 — 169).
Except for two rogue leaves, the eight Fair Copy fragments are written
on twenty-nine small quarto leaves, the smallest of all the manuscript leaves
(18.6 x 22.4 cm). These small leaves were created by tearing or cutting
bifolia in half (after their being written on since, in Barker-Benfield's words,
"the writing on many leaves is torn or cut through" [16]). The two
watermarks are each split across the reconstructed folds. The top half of a
posthorn in crowned shield (a common watermark) is visible on six of these
leaves and the bottom half with the appended monogrammed letters "P &
S" on twelve others (all are the remains of a single-quire notebook of 24
leaves). The remains of a second single-quire notebook of 24 leaves consist
of four leaves on which the watermark "PHIPPS & SON" is visible (which
explains the "P & S") and seven others on which the balance of the same
watermark is visible — the date "1809." The last leaf in Percy's Part DP
bears the watermarked date "1814"
set sideways at the inside edge jaggedly hacked just beyond the original fold;
it derives from a third notebook, slightly smaller than the other two.[9] A second rogue leaf (see Part DPM below)
derives from
a fourth notebook. All the Fair Copy paper is British and cream-colored. The
Fair Copy fragments — their page numbers, beginning with 99, centered at
the top of each page (instead of in the right and left hand corners as in most
of the Last Draft) — correspond to the following three parts depending on
who was transcribing:
DM: a forty-six-and-a-quarter page sequence in Mary's hand — 99
— 175 (Rieger 185.24 ["satisfied that nothing"] — 215.20 ["misled by
passion."]) — with five gaps of two or more pages.[10] Chapters are numbered as they are in Volume
Three of the 1818 edition. The missing pages, 1 — 98, clearly
corresponded to Chapter I through to the opening pages of Chapter V of that
volume. Thus, unlike the two-volume Last Draft, the Fair Copy was
conceived and written as three volumes for the projected three-volume 1818
edition. (The singlequired second notebook begins at leaf 139/140.)
DP: Twelve and three-quarter pages in Percy's hand — paginated (in
Mary's hand, like DM and DMP) 175 — 187 (Rieger 215.21 ["That he
should"] — 221.12 ["darkness and distance."]).
DPM: A 185B/186B leaf in Mary's hand (there is a
185A/186A leaf in DP above) which reproduces, with a few minor
variations the material that appears on Percy's 183 — 185A pages
(Rieger 219.18 ["whilst I destroyed"] — 220.8 ["to perform this"]). As my
"DPM" letter identification (copy of Part D/Percy/Mary) indicates, I follow
Murray (66 — 67) in hypothesizing that this duplicate fragment exists
because Mary felt obliged to recopy for the compositor, perhaps with
reference to the Last Draft, at least those of Percy's pages (which actually
extend from 181 — 186A) where the scissored edge cuts off the ends
(on the rectos) or the beginnings (on the versos) of some of the transcribed
words.[11]
This leaf was torn from a quarto notebook which was very slightly taller and
wider than the two single-quire notebooks (based on what can be assumed
from their surviving leaves). The top half of a posthorn in crowned shield
watermark is visible set sideways at the torn edge.
It is apparent from the description above that, for a general sense of the
rather complicated organizational relationships between the Last Draft and
the 1818 edition, divisions created by physical factors (types of paper and a
significant gap created by missing leaves) must be correlated with conceptual
divisions in those versions. As a visual aid, the following chart relates those
features including the framing divisions established by the narrators
(W[alton], F[rankenstein], and the M[onster]).
My parts A — D factor in both the physical paper divisions and the
conceptual Last Draft volumes. Parts A, B, and Cr apply to the
Continental paper (ignoring here the Part A1 insert on British paper); Part D
corresponds to the British paper. Parts A and A1 apply to Volume 1 and
parts B, Cr, and D to Volume II.
