Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor, & Jones
Percy Bysshe Shelley, feigning the author's being abroad, handled the
negotiations for a contract to publish Frankenstein, thus
preserving Mary Shelley's anonymity. That he first sought out John Murray,
Byron's publisher, may indicate that
Byron himself suggested such an avenue to the Shelleys. Whatever the
case, Murray declined the manuscript, upon whose refusal Shelley reverted
to his own publisher Charles Ollier. When Ollier, too, declined to accept
the book, the Shelleys were in something of a quandary. They resolved it
by turning to a publishing house -- Lackington's -- that had a large
inventory and specialized somewhat in sensational materials. According to
the two-page advertisement sheet accompanying the novel when it was
published in 1818 are
representative works that the Lackington firm apparently thought might
interest the reader of the novel: these include Francis Barrett, The
Magus; or Celestial Intelligences; a complete System of Occult Philosophy,
being a Summary of all the best Writers on the subjects of Magic, Alchymy,
Magnetism, the Cabala &c. (1801); Francis Barrett, Lives of the Alchemystical Philosophers
with a Critical Catalogue of Books on Occult Chemistry (1815); Thomas Heywood, The
Life, Prophecies, and Predictions of Merlin Interpreted (1813); Joseph Taylor
Apparitions; or, the Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted
House (1814); John Toland,
A Critical History of the Celtic Religion and Learning; containing an
account of the Druids (1815); and -- though officially published by
another house, White, Cochrane, & Co. -- Sarah Utterson, Tales of the Dead (1813), the
English translation of Jean Baptiste Benôit Eyriès's
Fantasmagoriana, the volume of ghost stories that served as pretext
for the ghost-story contest from which Frankenstein eventually came
into being (see 1831 Introduction 5
and note).
