Frankenstein's monster used to look OK, rare book shows

Frankenstein's monster started out not looking so bad, according to the first illustrated edition of Mary Shelley's classic novel.

The 1832 volume is on show at the State Library of Victoria from Saturday as part of the latest World of The Book, one of the largest international exhibitions of rare books.

In the engraved frontispiece illustration, Frankenstein's monster reclines on the floor sporting a six-pack an AFL player would envy.

He is surrounded by skulls and bones and his neck doesn't seem to be attached to his body in quite the right spot - but you can't have everything.

"He was quite a good-looking fellow and completely different to the modern interpretation of Frankenstein's monster," Daniel Wee from the State Library told AAP.

The caption speaks to Victor Frankenstein's horror as his monster comes to life.

"By the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open, it breathed hard and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs," the caption says. 

But it wan't until the reading public increased significantly during the 20th century with the advent of pulp books and comics that Frankenstein's monster became monstrous, Wee said.

Then there was Boris Karloff's portrayal in the 1931 film, an interpretation that has stuck in the public imagination for almost a century.

The third edition was the last published in Mary Shelley's lifetime, and crucially, names her as the author: the initial 1818 publication was anonymous for fear the controversial novel might result in her losing custody of her infant children.

It also includes a preface explaining how the plot came about.

It was a dark and stormy night, and on a trip to Lake Geneva with Percy Shelley, Lord Byron and John Polidori, Mary Shelley invented the tale as part of a contest to see who could write the best ghost story.

"That's when Frankenstein was born, from that particular night," Wee said.

Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus has elements of Gothic and Romantic literature but is often regarded as the first science-fiction novel.

The State Library paid for the book through its Women Writers Fund, established in 2021 to try to redress the gender imbalance in the library's historic collection.

More than 300 items are on display as part of World of The Book, with new acquisitions including Émilie du Châtelet's French translation of Isaac Newton's 1687 work Principia Mathematica and her own work Institutions de Physique (1740). 

World of The Book has been running since 2005, attracting more than 500,000 people each year.

The exhibition opens at the State Library of Victoria on Saturday.