Mary Shelley's 'Frankenstein' was first published in 1818. The full title was 'Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus', and the first edition appeared anonymously in London on 1 January as a three-volume novel.
Shelley began developing the story during the summer of 1816, when she was staying near Lake Geneva with Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron, Claire Clairmont, and John Polidori. Byron challenged the group to write supernatural stories, and Shelley imagined a scientist bringing a living being into existence and then recoiling from the result.
The 1818 edition presents Victor Frankenstein's creation through layered narratives involving Captain Robert Walton, Victor, and the creature. It combines Gothic horror with questions about scientific ambition, responsibility, isolation, and the consequences of abandoning a creation.
The date 1831 is a frequent distractor because Shelley published a substantially revised and more widely circulated edition that year. Her name appeared on the title page of the 1823 second English edition, but 1818 remains the date of the novel's first publication.