ABSTRACT
Readers of Frankenstein know that Mary Shelley was familiar with Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner, since she quotes the work twice in her novel. Early on in the 1818 edition, Robert Walton tells his sister that he is “going to unexplored regions, to ‘the land of mist and snow;’ but I shall kill no albatross, therefore do not be alarmed for my safety.” 1 In the 1831 text, the passage is expanded as Walton explains, “or if I should come back to you as worn and woful as the ‘Ancient Mariner?’ You will smile at my allusion; but I will disclose a secret. I have often attributed my attachment to, my passionate enthusiasm for, the dangerous mysteries of ocean, to that production of the most imaginative of modern poets.” 2 In both the 1818 and 1831 editions, Victor Frankenstein quotes lines 446–51 of The Ancient Mariner—
Like one who, on a lonely road
Doth walk in fear and dread,
And, having once turn’d round, walks on,
And turns no more his head;
Because he knows a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread—
