The Creature

A boy watches lightning split an old oak tree to splinters, and it changes what he wants to become. A grieving university student is mocked by one professor for chasing centuries-dead alchemists, and quietly reborn by another who shows him what real science can do. Two years pass in which he tells no one — not his family, not his oldest friend — what he is actually doing alone in his rented rooms at night. And on a dreary November night, something that took two years to build opens its eyes. First published 1818, when its author was twenty years old — reprinted here chapter by chapter, public domain in the United States, house account Enishio Classics.