"It’s Alive!, sumptuously illustrated in color with rare images of treasures from public and private collections, is a feast for the eye and mind. Elizabeth Campbell Denlinger’s hugely enjoyable, witty, thoughtful commentary, underpinned by extensive scholarship, expertly guides us though the labyrinths of this visual treat, tracing the history of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein from its beginnings to its becoming a universal meme. She takes us through antecedents of Frankenstein in eighteenth-century scientific experiments and Gothic terror tales, its genesis, making and publication, and (a special strength of the exhibition) its afterlife in nineteenth-century melodrama, Hollywood movies, posters, comic books, cartoons, and illustrations. It’s Alive! showed me much and taught me much. Those lucky enough to see the Morgan Library Exhibition will treasure It’s Alive! as a permanent souvenir; the rest of us will treasure it as the nearest thing to being there. It is all set to be a beautiful reference book and teaching resource. Mary Shelley would have been amazed!"—Nora Crook, Professor Emerita, Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, Editor of Frankenstein, and General Editor of Mary Shelley’s novels
"This magnificent book is something new. Its many illustrations, thoughtfully chosen and superbly reproduced, provide the best, indeed the only, visual history of Frankenstein. Denlinger’s text is a delight. She is not just an expert and engaging guide to a wealth of literary, historical and artistic material: she has profound things to say about Mary Shelley’s great novel and its relevance to today’s world.":—Stephen Hebron, Head of Weston Library Reader Services, Bodleian Libraries, author of Shelley's Ghost
