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Frankenstein by Mary Shelley with The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge and commentary by Alison Larkin: the 200th anniversary audio edition

This chilling tale of a gruesome monster unleashed into the world by an unthinking scientist was first conceived in 1818 by nineteen-year-old Mary Shelley on a dark, rainy night on Lake Geneva. Lord Byron and Percy Shelley challenged their friends to see who could come up with the most horrifying story imaginable. Mary Shelley did, terrifying them all with her nightmare-inspired tale.

Brilliantly narrated by British actor Clive Hayward, this 200th anniversary audio edition of Frankenstein is followed by The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge which had a haunting influence on young Mary Shelley many years before the story of Frankenstein entered her dreams. Commentary on Shelley's feminist roots is by Alison Larkin.

Mary Shelley (1797-1851), née Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, was born in London, the second daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft, well known feminist, philosopher, educator, and writer, and William Godwin, famous English philosopher, novelist, and journalist. She was best known for her Gothic novel Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus, written when she was eighteen and published when she was twenty-one. She was married to the Romantic writer Percy Bysshe Shelley.

Alison Larkin was born in Washington, DC, adopted at six weeks old by British parents, and raised in England and Africa. After graduating from Royal Holloway College, London University, and the Webber-Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art, she became a playwright and classical actress on the British stage. Then, at twenty-eight, she found her birth mother, who was living in Bald Mountain, Tennessee. The experience turned her into a stand-up comic. She was soon headlining at the Comic Strip in New York and the Comedy Store in Los Angeles, while maintaining her theatrical career. She also spent three years under a studio development contract to star in her own sitcom with ABC, CBS, and Jim Henson Productions. Her unusually wide range of voices can be heard in cartoons and movies, from work by James Cameron and Robert Altman to Pocahontas and The Wonder Pets. The audiobook of The English American, narrated by Alison, won an AudioFile Earphones Award.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) studied classics at Jesus College, Cambridge. As a radical young poet he collaborated with Wordsworth in Lyrical Ballads. He was by turns poet, dramatist, political journalist, essayist, and public lecturer. Chronic ill health and addiction to opium led to his death in 1834.

Clive Hayward, a well-known British actor, is delighted to be making his audiobook narration debut with Alison Larkin Presents. TV includes PRIME SUSPECT: THE FINAL ACT, opposite Helen Mirren; King George V1 in THE WINDSORS and DI Neil Gaunt in BBC's SILENT WITNESS. Theatre includes MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING with David Tennant, DUCKTASTIC! directed by Sir Kenneth Branagh, OH WHAT A LOVELY WAR with the National Theatre and the national tour of THE NEW STATESMAN, opposite Rik Mayall. Clive has also recorded numerous radio plays and documentaries for the BBC.