Letter from Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797–1851) to Sir Richard Phillips (1767–1840)

In Mary Shelley’s novel, Victor Frankenstein is a university student who uses chemistry to transform a patchwork of dead body parts into a living, thinking creature. Could such a thing happen in real life? In this letter, Mary Shelley expresses her doubts. Responding to a theory proposed by her father’s eccentric publisher friend, Sir Richard Phillips, she says: “I have great respect for that faculty we carry about us called Mind—And I fear that no Frankenstein can so arrange the gases as to be able to make any combination of them produce thought or even life…”