Frankenstein (PDF)

CU Mary Shelley C: 0 ' ,. I I  DOMINOES Frankenstein LEVEL ONE 400 HEADWORDS OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, ox2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University'...

CU Mary Shelley C: 0 ' ,. I I  DOMINOES Frankenstein LEVEL ONE 400 HEADWORDS OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, ox2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark ofOxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Frankenstein This eBook edition© Oxford University Press 2016 The moral rights of the author have been asserted First published 2016 ISBN: 978 O 19 462928 7 (code) & 978 O 19 462929 4 (in-app) Print edition ISBN: 978 o 19 424977 5 Print edition first published in Dominoes 2013 No copying or file sharing This digital publication is protected by international copyright laws. No part of this digital publication may be reproduced, modified, adapted, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, to any other person or company without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the ELT Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not modify, adapt, copy, store, transfer or circulate the contents of this publication under any other branding or as part of any other product. You may not print out material for any commercial purpose or resale Any websites referred to in this publication are provided by Oxford University Press for information only. Oxford University Press disclaims all and any responsibility for the content of such websites ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Cover image: Getty Images (Toward the light/Massimo Merlini/Yetta) Illustrations by: Fabio Leone/Bright Agency The publisher would like to thank the following for kind permission to reproduce photographs: Alamy Images pp.42 (MaryWollstonecraft Shelley/Lebrecht Music and Arts Photo Library), 43 (Gaston Leroux/Mary Evans Picture Library); Corbis p.38 (Ice cap in the Disco Bay/Patrick Robert); Getty Images pp.18 (Ski slopes/Andreas Voegele Photo), 24 (Snow-capped forest/ PhotoAlto/Jerome Gorin); Kobal Collection pp.43 (The Phantom ofthe Opera, 2004/Really Useful Films/Joel Schumacher Prods.), 44 (Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, 1941/MGM), 44 (Dorian Gray, 2009/Ealing Studios), 44 (The Mummy Returns, 2001/Alphaville/Imhotep Prod); Mary Evans Picture Library p.6 (Geneva across the lake, circa 1840/Engraving byJ Schoeder); Oxford University Press p.7 (Lightning/Photodisc).  DOMINOES Series Editors: Bill Bowler and Sue Parminter Frankenstein Mary Shelley Text adaptation by Bill Bowler Illustrated by Fabio Leone Mary Shelley (1797-1851) was the second wife of the English Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. In 1816 the Shelleys spent the summer in Geneva with the English poet Lord Byron, Dr John Polidori, and Mary's stepsister and Byron's lover - Claire Clairmont. One cold, rainy day, they began to tell ghost stories round the fire. Byron had the idea of everyone writing a horror story, and Mary wrote Frankenstein as a result. It was published in 1818. Mary later wrote a number of other novels and short stories, but Frankenstein remains her most famous book. OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS  CHAPTER 1 ON II f HIP IN THE ltE On a ship in the cold Arctic ice, Robert Walton's new friend began to tell the story of his life. /// My name is Victor Frankenstein. My father, Alphonse, ship you use a ship to go across came from Geneva. He met my mother when his best the water friend, Beaufort, died. Beaufort left his daughter, Caroline, ice water that is hard when it is with no money. Where could she live? My father found her very cold a room in his cousin Louisa's house. Two years later, he life (plural lives) you married her. live this After they married, my father took her to Germany, cousin the son (or daughter) of France, and Italy. I was born in Naples, and for some time your father's (or mother's) brother I was their only child. (or sister) One day, when I was about five, my father was away in marry to make someone your Milan. My mother and I visited Lake Como. Near the lake, husband or wife we saw the house of a poor family. The man and his wife lake a lot of water with land had five children. Four of these had dark hair and eyes. around it The fifth - a quiet young girl - had beautiful yellow hair poor without much money; and blue eyes. My mother always wanted a daughter, and something you say when you feel was interested in this little girl. sorry for someone 1  When my mother spoke to the poor woman, she told her the girl's story. Elizabeth Lavenza (that was the girl's name) was the daughter of a German woman and a Milanese man from a good family. When she was born, her mother died. So her father left her with the family by the lake. The poor woman gave the child a bed, milk, and love, and the girl's father gave her money for that. But then the Austrians took him and put him in prison, and he died there. Now the girl had no family and no money, and things were far from easy for the poor family. My mother felt sorry and spoke to the woman. After that, Elizabeth came and lived in our house. I played with her and called her 'cousin'. I was a year older than her, and she was more than a sister to me. After my younger brother Ernest was born, my mother and father took us all to Switzerland. We had a town house in Geneva, but lived mostly in a country house in Belrive, by the lake. I went to school and made friends with one of prison a place the schoolboys. His name was Henry Clerval and his father where people must stay when had a shop in Geneva. I was a happy child. This was before they do something wrong my life changed, before things went wrong. alchemist When I was about thirteen, I found - and began reading someone who thinks that they - a book by the old alchemist Cornelius Agrippa. can change cheap things into gold, 'There are many better writers, ' my father laughed. and stay alive for hundreds of years But I found the book interesting. And when I finished it, death the time I read books by different alchemists. 'Perhaps one day I when someone or something dies can stop death, and people can live for hundreds of years,' storm lots of rain I thought. 'Then I can be rich and famous.' and bad weather My youngest brother William was born about that time. lightning the light in the sky When I was fifteen, I remember a big storm on the lake when there is a storm one night. I saw the white lightning in the dark sky. And 2 then, suddenly, some lightning hit a big old tree by the science the study of the lake and broke it in two. A famous science teacher was natural world at our house in Belrive at the time, and he told me all university people study here about lightning. Suddenly the science of today was more after they finish school interesting for me than books by dead alchemists. fever when When I was seventeen, I finished school in Geneva and you get very hot because you are ill my father told me, 'Now you must go and learn at the look after to do University of lngolstadt.' things for someone or something that Before I could leave, Elizabeth was suddenly ill with a needs help fever. She nearly died. But my mother sat by her bed and lool