His daughter, the wife of Shelley, was much more successful; and her inimitable "Frankenstein; or The Modern Prometheus" (1817) is one of the horror-classics of all time. Composed in competition with her husband, Lord Byron, and Dr. John William Polidori in an effort to prove supremacy in horror-making, Mrs. Shelley's "Frankenstein" was the only one of the rival narratives to be brought to an elaborate completion; and criticism has failed to prove that the best parts are due to Shelley rather than to her. The novel, somewhat tinged but scarcely marred by moral didacticism, tells of the artificial human being moulded from charnel fragments by Victor Frankenstein, a young Swiss medical student. Created by its designer "in the mad pride of intellectuality," the monster possesses full intelligence but owns a hideously loathsome form. It is rejected by mankind, becomes embittered, and at length begins the successive murder of all whom young Frankenstein loves best, friends and family. It demands that Frankenstein create a wife for it; and when the student finally refuses in horror lest the world be populated with such monsters, it departs with a hideous threat 'to be with him on his wedding night.' Upon that night the bride is strangled, and from that time on Frankenstein hunts down the monster, even into the wastes of the Arctic. In the end, whilst seeking shelter on the ship of the man who tells the story, Frankenstein himself is killed by the shocking object of the search and creation of his presumptous pride. Some of the scenes in "Frankenstein" are unforgettable, as when the newly animated monster enters its creator's room, parts the curtains of his bed, and gazes at him in the yellow moonlight with watery eyes--"if eyes they may be called." Mrs. Shelley wrote other novels, including the fairly notable "Last Man;" but never duplicated the success of her first effort. It has the true touch of cosmic fear, no matter how much the movement may lag in places. Dr. Polidori developed his competing idea as a long short story, "The Vampyre;" in which we behold a suave villain of the true Gothic or Byronic type, and encounter some excellent passages of stark fright, including a terrible nocturnal experience in a shunned Grecian wood. (_Continued next month_) * * * * * BOOK REVIEW by Bob Tucker Black Moon by Thomas Ripley is a thrilling, weird book of voodoo worship and adventure that should please any weird fan. The author knows voodoo, and voodoo worshipers, and he most ably presents it in this story. The story concerns a young man of New York City, who is called to San Cristobal, an island off the coast of Haiti, by a mysteriously worded message, to the effect that the life of his sweetheart depends on his coming. Of course he goes, and is immediately plunged up to his neck in mystery and adventure.