This review, by Richard Labonte, appeared in his column “Bookmarks” for April 2007 — it was published in many gay papers, including San Francisco Bay Times, In Newsweekly (Boston), and gmax (South Africa).


The Man Who Wrote Frankenstein by John Lauritsen Pagan Press, 232  pages, $16.95 paper

    According to this exercise in enthusiastic scholarship, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley didn't write Frankenstein. Her husband, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, did — and independent scholar Lauritsen has the footnotes to prove it. The first edition of the gothic classic was published in 1818, ascribed to “Anonymous”; Mary's name popped up on a revised second edition, published in 1823, the year after the poet's death; her presumed authorship was cemented with 1831's bowdlerized edition, the one most of us have read. Lauritsen can be pedantic at times, but his spirited dissection of the “Mary Shelley myth” is convincing, as is his defense of the novel's literary virtues. But prime proof for Lauritsen that Mary isn't the author of the iconic novel stems from his well-reasoned assertion that male love is its dominant theme. Reading “gay” into the story of a monster and the man who created him isn't much of a stretch, really, and the author of this hobbyhorse study is quite limber about it.