Claim: It was Mary Shelley's husband who wrote Frankenstein

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein has haunted millions of readers since its publication in 1818."But," asks Jonathan D. Gross, a professor of English at DePaul University,"what if someone came along and told you that the novel you remember so well from sophomore year English, a story so ingrained in popular culture as to warrant its own cereal (Frankenberry), wasn't penned by Shelley?" [Here.]

The latest such person to come along, he writes, is John Lauritsen, an independent scholar who argues in The Man Who Wrote Frankenstein (Pagan Press, 2007) that there is no way Mary Shelley could have created Frankenstein. For starters, Mr. Lauritsen says, she was just 18 years old when the novel appeared, far too young to have created such a masterpiece. In addition, he contends, the novel explores homoerotic themes beyond the grasp of a 19th-century woman. Mr. Lauritsen believes Mary's husband, Percy Shelley, wrote the book.

Mr. Lauritsen is not the first person to argue that Percy Shelley wrote Frankenstein. In fact, the first such claim appeared the same year the novel came out, in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine. Others believe Percy Shelley co-wrote the book, reviewing and revising his wife's manuscript as he helped shepherd it through publication.....