Original Poetry by Victor and Cazire

The epigraph was from the "Lay of the Last Minstrel" by Sir Walter Scott: "Call it not vain:— they do not err, Who say, that, when the poet dies, Mute Nature mourns her worshipper."

Controversy surrounded the work, however, because one of the poems included, "Saint Edmond's Eve", originally appeared in the anonymously published Tales of Terror (1801), attributed to Matthew Gregory Lewis.

[5][6][7] In 1859, Richard Garnett was able to substantiate that the volume had been published but was unable to locate an extant copy.

The British Critic review described the volume as "filled up by songs of sentimental nonsense, and very absurd tales of horror."

The Poetical Register called the poems "downright scribble" and a "waste of paper", dismissing "all this sort of trash".

[8] In 2015, David Duff wrote that Original Poetry represents "a vital stage in Shelley's literary development, reflecting a fascinating but under-explored phase in the broader culture of Romanticism.

Victor Frankenstein's family resembles Percy Shelley's: in both, the father is married to a woman young enough to be his daughter; in both the oldest son has a favorite sister (adopted sister, or cousin, in Frankenstein's case) named Elizabeth.

Frankenstein's education is based on Percy Shelley's: both were avid students of Albertus Magnus, Paracelsus, Pliny, and Buffon; both were fascinated by alchemy and chemistry; both were excellent linguists, acquiring fluency in Latin, Greek, German, French, English, and Italian.