"Old Familiar Faces": Frankenstein, Anachronism, and Late Style

Self-describing at 26 as an 'aged person', Mary Shelley was late before she was ever early. The present paper argues that Shelley's first exploration of lateness predates even these remarks. Briefly examining the oft-noted biographical and historical grounds for Shelley's interest in lateness, as well as its more definitive articulation in her later works, this paper demonstrates that Frankenstein offers a highly prescient examination of lateness and late Romanticism. The analysis centres on the novel's use of narrative technique to create a distinctly late-Romantic style, in which anachronism takes pride of place. By having its characters quote from sources that ought to be as yet unknown to them, Frankenstein at once resurrects a Romantic world that has largely disappeared and demonstrating the vanity of any such undertaking. Moreover, in thus situating the narration in a tense space between a shattered past and a disappointing future, the novel establishes a frame in which Shelley can examine the ways in which a late-Romantic movement may emerge that at once honours and critiques its predecessors. The paper closes by contrasting Mary's and Percy Bysshe's historical methods, gesturing at a much wider revision of the critical concept of lateness.