Quote of the Day (Mary Shelley, on the Shock of ‘Sudden Change’)

"Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change."―Mary Shelley, Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus (1818)

I just thought I’d get you in the mood for Halloween with this quote from the novel Frankenstein and this image from the classic 1931 film—with Boris Karloff, of course, as the monster who makes a “great and sudden change” and brings terror to his creator.

Also on my mind these days, chiefly because I’ve finally gotten around to reading it, seven years after publication: The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein, by the astonishingly prolific British man of letters Peter Ackroyd.