Anne Eekhout

“Mary, or The Birth of Frankenstein is a little masterpiece of suspense-filled gothic fiction (…) Persuasive and mysterious, Eekhout’s ingenious novel (finely translated by Laura Watkinson) paints a touching and convincing portrait of Mary and the development of her unforgettable masterpiece. You don’t need to be a Shelley scholar to enjoy Eekhout’s own gothic romance.” – Miranda Seymour in the Financial Times

“Intricately written and wildly imaginative, historical fiction fans, dark academia lovers and gothic readers will really enjoy this one.” – Glamour UK

“This atmospheric imagining of the birth of Frankenstein is a must-read.” – iNews

“A fantastically moody, unsettling novel, with a teasing, enigmatic atmosphere entirely its own.”– Sarah Waters, New York Times bestselling author of The Paying Guests and Fingersmith

“The narrative unfolds in hypnotic language steeped in fantasy and allusion, poetically translated from the Dutch by Laura Watkinson. (…) With unusual deftness, Eekhout blurs the lines between the facts of Mary Shelley’s life and the world of the novel. (…) this fictional excavation of a lesser-known episode in Shelley’s life feels true to her memory.” – Ruth Franklin in The New Yorker

“Passionate and brooding.” CBS News Book Report

“A beautiful, hallucinatory dream of a novel, Anne Eekhout’s Mary and the Birth of Frankenstein brings Mary Shelley back to life with a brilliant intensity. This is a marvelous book about desire, and love, and the dark mysteries of the creative act.”–J.M. Miro, Author of the National Bestseller Ordinary Monsters

“Mary and the Birth of Frankenstein will appeal to all fans of Mary Shelley and stands equally strong as a fine piece of historical fiction.” – Bookreporter

“Intensely lyrical and powerfully haunting, Mary is an original take on an origin story of one of Britain’s most beloved and troubled writers. Sublime storytelling, and Gothic fiction at its very best!” – Susan Stokes-Chapman, bestselling author of Pandora

“Lush, atmospheric, and deliciously Gothic; Eekhout brings Mary Shelley’s childhood and her conception of Frankenstein to life as surely as any mad scientist: C.E. McGill, author of Our Hideous Progeny

“The Mary of Eekhout’s novel has a mind teeming with ghosts: her firstborn child, dead at 11 days; her famous mother, dead 11 days after Mary’s own birth. She is also haunted by a summer four years earlier, when she stayed at the home of a textile merchant in Dundee, Scotland, and struck up an intimate friendship with his spirited daughter, Isabella. The reader understands that this sojourn holds the key to many mysteries.” The New York Times Book Review

‘Rich, intricate and beguiling, this is a novel of enormous insight, great heart and incredible skill. Mary has so much to tell us about grief, fear, love and imagination. I will return to it often.’ – Nell Stevens, author of author of Briefly, A Delicious Life

‘A lyrical dream of a book that strays into the nightmarish, the gothic and the eerie with an assured elegance’ – Elizabeth Lee, author of Cunning Women

‘A novel that tiptoes and whispers, woos and caresses like the darkest of fairytales. Laudanum and love, wild imaginations and haunted hearts; I was bewitched by this profound and pleasurable imagining of Mary Shelley and the Birth of Frankenstein‘ — Joanne Burn, author of The Hemlock Cure

‘Like reading a laudanum dream… [this book has] a hallucinatory quality that encourages us to question everything and doubt everyone’ – Annie Garthwaite, author of Cecily

‘A compelling and sensitive deep-dive into Mary Shelley’s brilliant mind, in the formative years directly before she wrote Frankenstein. Mary reveals the rich inner life of one of the world’s greatest creative imaginations’ – Sarah Sheridan, author of The Fair Botanists

‘Eekhout pulls off a convincing gothic sensibility in this well-crafted portrait of Shelley’s interior life.’ – Publishers Weekly

‘A moody and evocative reveal of the backstory (behind the backstory) of Mary Shelley’s masterpiece, Frankenstein…[A] creative confirmation of Shelley’s position as the mother of all goth girls.’ – Kirkus Reviews

An intensely gripping reimagining of Mary Shelley’s youth, vividly exploring innocence, young love, gothic mystery and the roots of her literary masterpiece, Frankenstein.

Switzerland, 1816. A volcanic eruption in Indonesia envelopes the whole of Europe in ash and cloud. Amid this “year without a summer,” eighteen-year-old Mary Shelley and her lover Percy Bysshe Shelley arrive at Lake Geneva to visit Lord Byron and his companion John Polidori. Anguished by the recent loss of her child, Mary spends her days in strife. But come nightfall, the friends while away rainy wine-soaked evenings gathered around the fireplace, exchanging stories. One famous evening, Byron issues a challenge to write the best ghost story. Contemplating what to write, Mary recalls another summer, when she was fourteen…

Scotland, 1812. A guest of the Baxter family, Mary arrives in Dundee, befriending young Isabella Baxter. The girls soon spend hours together wandering through fields and forests, concocting tales about mythical Scottish creatures, ghosts and monsters roaming the lowlands. As their bond deepens, Mary and Isabella’s feelings for each other intensify. But someone has been watching them—the charismatic and vaguely sinister Mr. Booth, Isabella’s older brother-in-law, who may not be as benevolent as he purports to be…

Translated from the Dutch by Laura Watkinson

With gripping mastery and verve, Anne Eekhout brings to life a defining moment in Mary Shelley’s youth: the creative wellspring for one of the most original, thrilling, and timeless pieces of literature ever written. Provocative, wonderfully atmospheric and pulsing with emotion, Mary and the Birth of Frankenstein is a hypnotic ode to the power of imagination.

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