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GIFT BOOKS & POPULAR CULTURE

PUBLISHER
Reel Art Press

BOOK FORMAT
Hardcover, 9 x 11 in. / 208 pgs / 125 color / 75 bw.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date
Active

DISTRIBUTION
D.A.P. Exclusive
Catalog: FALL 2017 p. 9   

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9781909526464 TRADE
List Price: $39.95 CDN $53.95

AVAILABILITY
In stock

TERRITORY
NA ONLY

Frankenstein lives! 200 years of the book, the movies and the monster in pop culture and beyond

BOOKSELLER TRADE ANNOTATION

Frankenstein lives! 200 years of the book, the movies and the monster in pop culture and beyond
  • On the 200th birthday of Frankenstein: a visual overview including a facsimile reprint of the earliest-known manuscript and images of the beloved monster in film posters, magazines, playbills, prints, book covers, advertisements, packaging, comics and graphic novels
  • A great package at just $39.95: the hardcover features 200 illustrations
  • The only book in print providing an historical & VISUAL overview of Frankenstein.
  • Author Christopher Frayling (born 1946) is a popular cultural historian -- and the author of Once Upon A Time in Italy: The Westerns of Sergio Leone (Abrams, 2005), The 2001 File: Harry Lange and the Design of the Landmark Science Fiction Film (RAP 2015), and Vampyres: Genesis and Resurrection (T&H 2016)
  • Will appeal to LITERARY audiences, FILM buffs, and POPULAR CULTURE Monster fans
  • Works for the NOSTALGIA market, film poster DESIGN lovers, and BIBLIOPHILES.
  • Expect review coverage on Book REVIEW pages in print and on-line, popular culture and film pages in mainstream entertainment magazines like Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly, and GQ
  • Did you know there have been 120+ Frankenstein films?
  • Includes posters and memorabilia from films such as James Whale's Frankenstein (1931) and The Bride of Frankenstein (1935), both with Boris Karloff (still the predominant visual image of the monster), Hammer's The Curse of Frankenstein (1957)and Kenneth Branagh's/Francis Ford Coppola's Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994)
  • Pub date timed to have books in-store for Halloween!

  

REEL ART PRESS

Frankenstein: The First Two Hundred Years

By Christopher Frayling.

Frankenstein: The First Two Hundred YearsFrankenstein lives! 200 years of the book, the movies and the monster in pop culture and beyondOn New Year’s Day 1818, Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein was first published in an anonymous three-volume edition of 500 copies. Some thought the book was too radical in its implications; a few found the central theme intriguing; no-one predicted its success.Since then, there have been many, many adaptations—120 films alone, at the last count—on screen, stage, in novels, comics and graphic novels, in advertisements and even on cereal packets. From a Regency nightmare, Frankenstein became a cuddly childhood companion—thoroughly munstered, so to speak. The story has been interpreted as a feminist allegory of birthing, an ecological reading of mother earth, an attack on masculinist science, the origin of science fiction, an example of “female gothic,” a reaction to the rise of the industrial proletariat and much else besides. Frankenstein lives! The F word has been applied, since the 1950s, to test-tube babies, heart transplants, prosthetics, robotics, cosmetic surgery, genetic engineering, genetically modified crops and numerous other public anxieties arising from scientific research. Today, Frankenstein has taken over from Adam and Eve as the creation myth for the age of genetic engineering.This book, celebrating the 200th birthday of Frankenstein, traces the journey of Shelley’s Frankenstein from limited-edition literature into the bloodstream of contemporary culture. With text by renowned Gothic scholar Sir Christopher Frayling, it includes new research on the novel’s origins; a facsimile reprint of the earliest-known manuscript version of the creation scene; visual material on adaptations for the stage, in magazines, on playbills, in prints and in book publications of the 19th century; visual essays on many of the film versions and their inspirations in the history of art; and Frankenstein in popular culture—on posters, advertisements, packaging, in comics and graphic novels.

Featured image, an 1882 Joseph Swain political cartoon for Punch, featuring Nationalist Charles Parnell cowering before a violent, simian Irishman, is reproduced from 'Frankenstein: The First Two Hundred Years.'

PRAISE AND REVIEWS

Publishers Weekly

Jones Everett

Frankenstein: The First Two Hundred Years by Christopher Frayling celebrates the 200th birthday of Frankenstein by tracing the journey of Mary Shelley’s creation from limited-edition literature to pop culture standby.

Publisher's Weekly

Everett Jones

Frankenstein: The First Two Hundred Years by Christopher Frayling celebrates the 200th birthday of Frankenstein by tracing the journey of Mary Shelley’s creation from limited-edition literature to pop culture standby.

Dread Central

Jonathan Barkan

Frankenstein: The First Two Hundred Years Celebrates the Legacy of Mary Shelley’s Creation

n3rdabl3

Angela DiLella

Frankenstein: The First 200 Years to Hit Bookshelves by Halloween

Daily Dead

Derek Anderson

Horror Highlights: Frankenstein: The First Two Hundred Years

The New York Times

Zoe Lescaze

...amply illustrated history of thenovel and its enduring fascination…Through prints, paintings, ephemera and photography, Frayling traces the creature’s visual evolution…between grindhouse film posters, New Yorker cartoons, postage stamps and the excellent woodcuts Lynd Kendall Ward created for a 1934 edition of the novel. The sheer quantity demonstrates just how thoroughly the creature has saturated contemporary culture...

Sci Fi Bulletin

Horror fans are very well served by Christopher Frayling’s, 'Frankenstein: The First Two Hundred Years'.

NPR

Genevieve Valentine

Half scholarly study, half art book, 'The First Two Hundred Years' offers some great details about the story's blockbuster success on the stage, and you-know-this-one glimpses of the movie versions of everyone's favorite monster… Frayling's an old hand at cultural histories, and his wry narration feels like a casual lecture from an aficionado.

Frankenstein: The First Two Hundred Years

in stock  $39.95


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FROM THE ARTBOOK BLOG

CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 11/20/2017

SHIPPING NOW! ‘Frankenstein: The First Two Hundred Years’

SHIPPING NOW! ‘Frankenstein: The First Two Hundred Years’

Reviewed in such wildly disparate media as the New York Times Book Review, Horrorphilia and It’s Nice That—where Owen Pritchard cites an early review calling Mary Shelley's 1818 novel, “perhaps the foulest toadstool that has yet sprung up form the reeking dunghill of the present time”—Sir Christopher Frayling’s Frankenstein: The First Two Hundred Years is one of the most highly anticipated books on our fall list and one of our top Holiday Gift Books of 2017. Published on the bicentennial of Mary Shelley’s game-changing, genre-spanning novel, this sweeping survey includes everything from a facsimile reprint of the earliest-known manuscript version of the creation scene to Simpsons takeoffs to Third Reich propaganda images. Featured here is the September 1964 cover of Mad magazine by Norman Mingo, published the same month that The Munsters premiered on CBS television. continue to blog


FROM THE ARTBOOK BLOG

CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 10/23/2018

Get Halloween inspiration from 'Frankenstein: The First Two Hundred Years'

Get Halloween inspiration from 'Frankenstein: The First Two Hundred Years'

When Mary Shelley's then-anonymously authored Gothic horror novel Frankenstein came out in 1818, early reviews were not good. "Our readers will guess from this summary, what a tissue of horrible and disgusting absurdity this work presents," the Quarterly Review decried. "It is piously dedicated to Mr. Godwin, and is written in the spirit of his school. The dreams of insanity are embodied in the strong and striking language of the insane, and the author, notwithstanding the rationality of his preface, often leaves us in doubt whether he is not as mad as his hero… When we have… admitted that Frankenstein has passages which appal the mind and make the flesh creep, we have given it all the praise (if praise it can be called) which we dare to bestow. Our taste and our judgment alike revolt at this kind of writing, and the greater the ability with which it may be executed the worse it is—it inculcates no lesson of conduct, manners or morality; it cannot mend, and will not even amuse its readers, unless their taste have been deplorably vitiated…" Clearly, the reviewer got it wrong. Read more on the 200-year history of this game-changing novel, play, film, and character in Christopher Frayling's tremendous illustrated study, Frankenstein: The First Two Hundred Years, shipping now for Halloween delivery. continue to blog


FROM THE ARTBOOK BLOG

CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 10/31/2018

Celebrate Halloween 2018 with 'Frankenstein: The First Two Hundred Years'

Celebrate Halloween 2018 with 'Frankenstein: The First Two Hundred Years'

There's no better book for Halloween inspiration than Sir Christopher Frayling's celebratory illustrated history, Frankenstein: The First Two Hundred Years. Featured here is a studio portrait of Basil Rathbone as Baron Wolf von Frankenstein in Universal Pictures' 1939 classic, Son of Frankenstein—the third in the studio's Frankenstein cycle and the last to feature Boris Karloff as the Monster. Reflections of Karloff and Bela Lugosi as the broken-necked assistant Ygor are visible in Rathbone's head mirror. continue to blog


FROM THE ARTBOOK BLOG

CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 10/23/2017

Sir Christopher Frayling launches 'Frankenstein: The First Two Hundred Years' with screening at Metrograph

Sir Christopher Frayling launches 'Frankenstein: The First Two Hundred Years' with screening at Metrograph

Friday, October 27 at 6 PM, Sir Christopher Frayling presents a 35mm screening of James Whale's Frankenstein at Metrograph, after which he will sign advance copies of his new book, Frankenstein: The First Two Hundred Years, published by Reel Art Press.
continue to blog


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