Mary shelley biography bbc winston

Frankenstein: Birth of a Monster

BBC ONE, Sunday 7 December at pm

In life, as in literature, Mary Shelley's famous monster, Frankenstein, overshadows its creator.

The story of Frankenstein has become a modern myth, one which has developed a life of its own, mutating with every re-telling.

It is frequently forgotten that the creature now thought of as Frankenstein – Boris Karloff's dumb, inarticulate beast – is massively removed from the sophisticated, sensitive creation of Mary Shelley, perfect in all but appearance.

Using Mary's own words and accounts from the people who knew her, and dramatic reconstructions of events in Mary's life and from her famous novel, Frankenstein: Birth of a Monster tells the true story of Frankenstein's monster and the remarkable woman who created him.

It reveals how the turbulent events in Mary's emotional life - the death of her mother in childbirth, the suicide of her sister and the dro