Enduring Power Of Frankenstein Inspires Two Monstrous Exhibitions

By Nancy Mattoon

An 1857 Portrait of Mary Shelley
By Reginald Easton,
Allegedly Based On Her Death Mask.
(Image Courtesy of National Library of Medicine.)

It seems impossible that a single exhibit could appeal to fans of science fiction, Gothic novels, Romantic poetry, radical philosophies, horror movies, monsters and early feminism. But the announcement of the opening on December 3, 2010 of a new show at the Bodleian Library of the University of Oxford, Shelley’s Ghost: Reshaping the Image of a Literary Family, will have them all lining up for a chance to learn more about one of Britain's most renowned clan of writers.

A Page From Mary Shelley's
Original Manuscript Of Frankenstein.
(Image Courtesy of Wikipedia Commons.)

The writings of Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley; his wife, pioneering science fiction and Gothic novelist Mary Shelley; and Mary’s parents, radical philosopher William Godwin; and early feminist Mary Wollstonecraft will all be on display. But the most talked about piece in the show is the original manuscript of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818).

An 1819 Portrait of Percy Shelley
By Alfred Clint.
(Image Courtesy of National Library of Medicine.)

The handwritten notebook containing Mary Shelley's classic tale of scientist Victor Frankenstein and his monstrous creation is one of the great treasures of the Bodleian's collections, and has never before been on display in Great Britain. It contains not only Mary's first draft of the novel, but also many handwritten corrections, suggestions, and other marginalia from her first reader, her poet husband, Percy. After the display at Oxford closes on March 27, 2011, it will travel to New York City. The New York Public Library is a co-sponsor of the show, which includes many artifacts from its The Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and His Circle.

Frontispiece And Title Page
From The Third Edition of Frankenstein;
Or The Modern Prometheus, 1831.
(Image Courtesy of The National Library of Medicine.)

A virtual version of the Shelley’s Ghost exhibition will also be made available on December 3. It promises to include digitized leaves from the Frankenstein manuscript, along with pages from the three-volume, first edition of the novel, and an image of the frontispiece of the novel's third edition, which marked the first time that Dr. Frankenstein and his creature were ever depicted visually.

Poster For The Classic 1931
Film Version of Frankenstein,
Directed By James Whale.
(Image Courtesy of The National Library of Medicine.)

Oxford's virtual exhibition was not online as this piece was written, so the images here are from an earlier, but no less interesting, Frankenstein-inspired exhibit from the American National Library of Medicine (NLM). Frankenstein: Penetrating The Secrets of Nature "looks at the world from which Mary Shelley came, at how popular culture has embraced the Frankenstein story, and at how Shelley's creation continues to illuminate the blurred, uncertain boundaries of what we consider 'acceptable' science." It includes a detailed exploration of the ways in which well-intentioned men of science have unwittingly developed technology which, in the wrong hands, leads to "monstrous" creations. The exhibit connects Frankenstein, both in Shelley's novel and in popular culture offshoots, with genetic engineering, human-animal organ transplantation, eugenics, cloning, and other bioethical issues.

A 1935 Article From Popular Science Magazine,
Clearly Influenced By Images
From The Film Version Of Frankenstein.
(Image Courtesy of The National Library of Medicine.)

The combination of the new Oxford exhibit and the previous NLM exhibit reinforce the brilliance and continued relevance of Mary Shelley's tale of "the modern Prometheus." In Greek mythology Prometheus, one of the Titans vanquished by the Olympian Gods, stole fire from Zeus with the best of intentions, and returned it to mere mortals. But ultimately the well-meaning deeds of Prometheus led to the opening of Pandora's box, and the unleashing of all of the troubles of the world. Dr. Frankenstein also maintains that his attempts at reanimating the dead are motivated by "benevolent intentions" and an unquenchable thirst "for the moment when I should put them in practice." But the ultimate result of the scientist's attempt to "mock the stupendous Creator of the world," is an endless spiral of misunderstandings, cruelty,violence, savagery, and death.

Actor Boris Karloff Transformed By Make-Up Artists
Into The 1931 Film Version Of Dr. Frankenstein's Creature.
(Image Courtesy of The National Library of Medicine.)

The unceasing echoes of the timeless themes of Frankenstein through nearly two centuries are all the more remarkable when one considers the age of its author. Mary Shelley began writing the story as a teenager, age 18, and published it just as she reached her twenties.

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Secrets of King Tut's Tomb Revealed Online

 King Tut's First Gig As A Stand-up Comic,
Batman Confidential #26 (April 2009).
(Image Courtesy of Wikipedia.)

In 2009, almost 90 years after the discovery of his final resting place (and over 3,000 years after his burial) the Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamun was still famous enough to inspire a comic book villain and a traveling exhibition of relics from his tomb. He's so familiar that he's known by a nickname, "King Tut." But one Egyptologist believes that although we think we know all about our favorite Pharaoh, in fact his tomb still holds many mysteries.

Howard Carter And An Assistant
Examine Tut's Innermost Coffin, 1922.
Photo By Harry Burton.

(Image ©Griffith Institute. Used by Permission.)

Jaromir Malek is an archivist at one of the finest Egyptology libraries in the world, the Griffith Institute, located in the basement of the Sackler Library at the University of Oxford. The prize collection here contains the notes, diaries, and photographs of Howard Carter, the Englishman who discovered King Tut's tomb in 1922. Amazingly, when Malek began working at the institute, he learned that fewer than one-third of the artifacts recovered from the tomb had been adequately studied and documented. This was a situation he found "unacceptable," so he began a project to "make sure that all of the excavation records are available to anyone who is interested."

A Statue Of Anubis, The God Of The Dead.

Photo By Harry Burton.
(Image ©Griffith Institute. Used by Permission.)

Malek began his database, Tutankhamun: Anatomy Of An Excavation, in 1993. It was an inspired idea, but also a huge undertaking. A total of 5,398 objects were found in the tomb. The artifacts themselves are located at the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities in Cairo, but Carter's notes and photographs were donated to the Griffith Institute, and nearly forgotten. And we're not talking about just a couple of spiral notebooks: Carter documented his finds on more than 3,500 densely written cards. And more than 1,000 images of the excavation were taken by the expedition's photographer, Harry Burton. There were also close to 60 maps and plans of the excavation site, and hundreds of pages in Carter's journals and diaries. Adding to the difficulties, many of these items were extremely fragile.

Howard Carter, On Left, Oversees
the Removal of Artifacts From King Tut's Tomb.
Photo By Harry Burton.

(Image ©Griffith Institute. Used by Permission.)

As of July 2010, about 98% of the archive has been posted online. And this despite the fact that, due to lack of funding, Malek and his colleagues had to do the entire project in their spare time. Malek believes the are several reasons why so much of Howard Carter's documentation has been neglected by scholars. The sheer size of the find was daunting: Carter spent nearly 10 years cataloging it. And Carter died in 1939, only seven years after the excavation was completed, before he could publish all of his writings. "He started working on the final publication, but he was physically and mentally exhausted after a very hard 10 years," says Malek.

A Shrine Which Held
King Tut's Internal Organs.
Photo by John Ross.

(Image ©Griffith Institute. Used by Permission.)

Malek decided that the only way to be sure Carter's discoveries were studied was to post the entire archive online. "We can't make Egyptologists work on the material if they are not inclined to do so," he says. "But we could make sure that all of the excavation records are available ... then there will be no excuse." Malek not only wants to bring the archive to the general public, but also hopes to put "moral pressure" on Egyptologists, to goad them into studying this momentous collection. "Tutankhamun's is the only royal tomb... that wasn't gutted by [grave] robbers. If we want to know what an Egyptian pharaoh took with him to the afterlife," he says, "it's the only one we can look at. John H. Taylor, who looks after the Egyptian mummies collection at the British Museum in London, agrees. "A lot of the objects will be very unfamiliar to people. What is needed is for schools and people with a more general interest to have access to the basic data and see what's there."

The Sandals Found In Tut's Tomb.

Photo By Harry Burton.
(Image ©Griffith Institute. Used by Permission.)

André Veldmeijer of the PalArch Foundation in Amsterdam describes the online archive as "one of the best things in Egyptology". He has firsthand knowledge of the value of the original photographs taken of the exhumation. Carter and his colleagues, he states, "were the first to see the objects, and therefore saw them in the best condition possible." Veldmeijer looked to the online archive to help him with a study of the shoes found in the tomb. A trip to Cairo revealed that a pair of sandals from the excavation had deteriorated into "an oozing black mess." In the Carter photographs, the same pair was shown in pristine condition, with the leather, gold leaf, and beadwork intact. "It's a good example of how you can get so much more from archaeological research," he notes. "So many excavations have not been properly published."

The Interior of Tut's Tomb, 1922.

Photo By Harry Burton.
(Image ©Griffith Institute. Used by Permission.)

Jaromir Malek believes that the photographs and letters he has scanned into the online archive are the only documents which show the tomb as it was upon discovery. "It seems like just a pile of things, but there is a system...you can see what the thinking behind it was. Nothing in the tomb was accidental. We will not be able to understand the tomb as a unit until all of the objects are properly explained." He hopes the archive's documents will be studied by both scholars and curious armchair archaeologists. "This doesn't belong to Egyptologists only, or even to Egypt only. Everybody should have the right to see what's there."

Lovers Live On In Victorian Valentines

Display Card For Valentine Maker Jonathan King, London c. 1870's.

(All Images Courtesy of Bodleian Library.)

A permanent collection of temporary items. That's one way to sum up what libraries and archives call "ephemera." Preserving items that were meant to be briefly used and thrown away seems like an exercise in futility at first glance. But paper ephemera -- such as leaflets, tickets, programs and playbills, posters, bookmarks, trade and calling cards, advertising inserts, and product packaging -- often reflect the day to day history of the average person in a way that more formal historical records can't.

The Manufacture Of Valentines As Depicted In The Illustrated London News, February 14, 1874.

As a seasonally appropriate example, think about Valentine's Day cards. They range from the intricate and flowery to the crude and humorous. They can be costly confections carefully constructed, or cheaply churned-out chaff. They are a microcosm of the evolution of printing and manufacturing, showing the shift from completely handmade items to labor intensive hand-finished factory pieces, to mass produced bulk greeting cards. As the holiday for lovers nears, the University of Oxford's Bodleian Library is highlighting its fine collection of Valentine's Day ephemera with a temporary exhibition. The display reveals the written rituals of courtship in the days before the almost complete impermanence of texting, tweeting, and e-mailing replaced paper tokens of love.

Embossed Lace-paper Valentine With Hand-painted Satin, Scraps, Feathers and Tinselling, Watermarked and Postmarked 1845.

The curators of the university's rare book library and archive have put together a carefully chosen display of thirty-seven St. Valentine's Day items from The John Johnson Collection of Printed Ephemera. The exhibition, entitled The Season For Love, presents an excellent cross-section of nineteenth-century valentines, which illustrate the complex design and manufacturing of love tokens in the Victorian era. The selection ranges from home-made creations fashioned from silk, tinsel, lace, feathers, and artificial flowers, to intricate "dainty wares" that, while manufactured, required hand finishing by several trained artisans, to clumsily colored woodcuts printed on poor-quality pulp paper. Some contain complex puzzles and games, mock maps, and phony bank notes. Others feature ugly caricatures and other images meant to insult rather than inflame the recipient.

Stencil-Colored Woodcut Of An Ugly Spinster c. 1835-40. Verse Reads In Part: "If the devil step'd, old lady, from his regions just below, He couldn't find a picture like the one before me now."

The text of the cards is as varied as the imagery, ranging from elaborate verses featuring classical and mythological references, to cheap jokes and crassly insulting humor. The exhibit catalog refers to an article in the London Review of 1865 which lambasted valentine verses both high and low. Lofty language is said to be skillful but utterly predictable, "all 'thine' and 'shine' and 'divine'--and of course 'valentine'--'bliss' and 'kiss' and 'beauty' and 'duty.'" But the writer's most scathing words are saved for those who pen the poisonous poetry of the cruelly comic cards: "scandalous productions... wretchedly engraved... an outlet for every kind of spiteful innuendo, for every malicious sneer, for every envious scoff."

Hand-colored Valentine c. 1840's. The Pictogram Puzzle Must Be Deciphered To Understand The Expression Of Adoration.

The wildly contrasting artistic designs and poetic verses of the cards chosen by the Bodleian Library curators represent a cross-section of Victorian society, from the poshest toffs to the coarsest commoners. These ephemeral items reflect the lovers of their time with an immediacy that conventional written volumes could never hope to achieve. Will the impermanence of our online communication prevent us from leaving a legacy of contemporary courtship equal to the valentines of the Victorians? If so, the history of our time will prove the poorer for having turned the transitory into the transparent.

Posted by Nancy Mattoon