Dr Serena Trowbridge – Frankenstein and its Legacies

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley is a novel that never goes away; an early reviewer described it as ‘harassing the heart’. It’s a work of science fiction, of Gothic, of environmental and philosophical concerns, and is endlessly adaptable and used as a metaphor. Why does it have such enduring power? And what does it mean to us in the 21^st century? This talk will look at the novel and its legacies and explore why a novel written by a teenager over 200 years ago still matters today.

Dr Serena Trowbridge is Reader in Victorian Literature at Birmingham City University. She specialises in Pre-Raphaelite women; her last book was My Ladys Soul: The Poetry of Elizabeth Siddall, and she is currently working on an anthology of writing by Pre-Raphaelite women. She is Chair of the Pre-Raphaelite Society and Senior Vice-President of the Birmingham & Midland Institute.