University of Virginia Library

I

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

1818 text, I refer to page and line numbers in James Rieger's extremely useful line-numbered 1974 edition of that text (e.g., Rieger 103.5). In quotations from the manuscripts, carets are used to indicate an above-the-line insert.

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

of the second leaf some time before Mary wrote on it), followed by a single leaf of the same folio paper. All but the torn second leaf measure 20.2 x 31.6 cm. The centered watermark "T W & B | BOTFIELD" is visible on the leaves foliated 1 and 3. A centered crowned oval Britannia watermark incorporating the date "1815" is visible on the torn attached leaf 2. All the watermarks are upside down relative to Mary's script. Most probably these leaves of British paper were detached from the same folio notebook before being written on. There are no margins; Mary writes flush to the left and right hand edges of the page, on both sides of the leaves. This insert material is headed "Chapt. 2". It seems likely, therefore (see note 3 above), that a Chapter 1 portion of the missing forty pre-Part A pages corresponded to, or stood in place of, the frame narrator Walton's four prefatory letters and that Chapter 2 here corresponds to Chapter I (Volume One) of the 1818 edition.

The Last Draft — Volume II

B: The pages beginning on a verso headed "Vol. II" and paginated by Mary 1 ("161" — a continuation of the Volume I, or Part A, pagination sequence — appears on the blank recto) — 21 (corresponding to Rieger 97.17 — 109.8); they comprise manuscript chapters 1 and 2, and part of Chapter 3.[5] Most pages have pencil-ruled margins. The eleven leaves involved are of the same light-blue type as Part A and were originally part of the same quarto Continental notebook. They once constituted leaves 8 — 10 of quire VIII and the first eight leaves of quire IX (the remaining four are lost).

Cr: After a significant gap, a disjointed sequence (containing part of a deleted first and then a completed second rewrite of the now lost original Part [C]) of the same light-blue pages (most probably from the same Continental paper notebook as parts A and B) continues in an order that can be construed from the textual continuities and from matching leaves now separated. First are two separated bifolia consisting of: a recto numbered 57 (a cancelled

marginless page, here distinguished from a second recto numbered 57 as 57A), its marginless unnumbered verso (with the order of continuation number "59" about one-fifth down); a recto numbered 60 (a marginless page with the right hand bottom corner torn off before use), its verso numbered 61 (marginless with the corresponding left hand bottom corner torn off); a recto numbered 62 (marginless), its blank verso page; and a blank recto (with its right hand lower corner torn off before use), its verso numbered 63 (with an unruled margin and the corresponding left hand lower corner torn off). Bruce Barker-Benfield accounts for the two blanks by surmising "that MWS had accidentally turned over two leaves of the bound notebook" (9). Since the text is continuous between pages 61 and 62, these four leaves must at some point have formed the two central bifolia of their quire.

Part Cr continues with a bifolium which almost certainly, at some previous point, was the central bifolium of the same quire (it must have been detached for rewrite purposes before the continuous text of pages 61 and 62 was written). It was intact at the time of writing since penstrokes carry across the matched join. In essence, the first passage on what was this central bifolium replaces and continues the cancelled material on page 57A above and at the top of its unpaginated verso, while a second passage on the same bifolium continues from page 63 above. The once central bifolium consists of: a recto numbered 57 (57B, with an unruled margin and headed, by Percy, "another Chapter"), its verso numbered 58 (with an unruled margin); and a recto numbered 59 (with an unruled margin and text about one-third down the page identified by the continuation number "64"), its unnumbered verso lacking a margin and including text about one-fifth down the page identified by continuation number "65". The "65" material concludes (presumably because the two pages accidentally left blank had not been noticed, and because there was no more Continental paper) on a fragment of off-white, probably British paper (approximately one quarter the height of the white leaves of Part A1).[6]

The gap between 21, the last page of Part B, and 57, the first page of Part Cr, suggests, if the draft was paginated continuously, that 36 pages numbered 22 — 57 are lost. But only slightly more than eight pages account for the interval between the Rieger 1818 edition equivalent of the end of Mary's page 21 — (the appropriate) "how was that possible" (Rieger 109.8) — and the 1818 equivalent of the beginning of her page 57 — "Some time elapsed" (Rieger 117.17, the beginning of Chapter VI of Volume Two). It is not, however, an inevitable deduction that a substantial amount of text in the draft was cut; it is possible (indeed likely) that the first page number of Cr was made to coincide with a lost page of pre-Part D material and does not continue the 1 — 21 sequence of Part B. Since Part B ends five draft pages into Mary's Chapter 3, the missing pages (of greater or lesser extent) and the following extant pages would seem to have accounted for the remainder of Mary's Chapter 3 and a "Chapter 4", which, after what can be assumed to have been, perhaps on different occasions, deletions and rewriting, presumably corresponded to the 1818 Volume Two chapters V and VI. As will appear, the establishment of this Chapter 4 is important. After the rewrite stage that survives as Cr, it was divided into two chapters (presumably 4 and 5) presumably in line with Percy's direction at the top of page 57B, "another Chapter". His placement of this direction for the beginning of what presumably became Mary's "Chapter 5" corresponds to the beginning of the 1818 Chapter VI. That undesignated "Chapter 5," the rewritten second half of a long "Chapter 4," is all that now survives of "Chapter 4." I apologise to the perhaps wearied reader for what might seem a very finicky account of this central Part Cr, but it clearly relates to a portion of the manuscript that presented major problems and involved considerable revision. Under scrutiny, Cr provides the best clues as to the course of Frankenstein's redrafting and to an area of creative trauma.

D: The remainder of the Last Draft consists of seventy-five off-white folio leaves of British paper measuring 19.9 — 20.2 x 31 cm; they are, then, larger than the light blue leaves of parts A, B, and Cr, and very slightly smaller than the off-white leaves of A1. These leaves derive from five successive sixteen-leaf quires (originally in a bound notebook) of which only the second and third are complete (leaves 1 and 2 are missing from the first, leaf 16 from the fourth, and leaves 12 — 16 from the fifth). Three leaves cannibalized from elsewhere in the same notebook (and a scrap of different paper) have been inserted in quire II after its eighth leaf. The watermarked date "1806" below the initials "JL" is visible (upside down relative to the writing) at the center of 39 leaves, and a Britannia in crowned triple oval is visible (also upside down) at the center of 36 other leaves.[7] There are unruled margins throughout. (The columns of mathematical calculations in the margin of the first page appear to be basically two pagination totals.) The pages are numbered a hard-to-make-out 62 (possibly changed to 66 — the "2" is blotted in a way that makes it look like a "6", or like it may have been altered to a "6" to follow on from the Part Cr continuation numbers "64" and "65"; at any rate, the next page is 63) to 203 (Rieger 122.28 — 221.12 to the end).

After two cancelled lines, the first page of Part D, page 62, opens at the equivalent of the start of the 1818 Chapter VII (Volume Two). There is no chapter designation on page 62. Chapter headings appear for chapters 7 — 18 which are paginated 70 — 203.[8] Presumably the opening pages 62 — 69 constitute

the concluding portion of "Chapter 6." The opening portion of that "Chapter 6" is now lost. The also-now-lost Part [C] (as distinguished from Cr) seems to have constituted the end of a "Chapter 4." In other words, there is reason to suspect that the pagination and the chapter numbering of Part D was not the result of a continuous sequence initiated by Part B.

Barker-Benfield's reconstruction of the notebook quires indicates, as noted above, that three leaves were inserted after leaf 101A/102A (there is a second leaf numbered 101 and 102) and that one leaf (presumably two cancelled pages) is missing after leaf 181/182 which concludes with cancelled text (the following page number 183 appears to have been altered from 185). This evidence points to fourth and fifth significant areas of revision (additional to A1, the last two thirds of Volume I Chapter 14, and Volume II "Chapter 4") commencing at Rieger 149.5 ("But it is this gloom") and at Rieger 206.9 ("You took me on board").

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:

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.