1. The movie database imdb.com lists 70 full-length films with “Frankenstein” in the title, plus another 100 or so shorts or TV episodes.
2. Mary Shelley wrote the book when she and her not-yet husband Percy Shelley were visiting Lord Byron in Switzerland.
3. She subtitled it The Modern Prometheus after the mythologal Titan who is said to have created man from clay.
4. Despite the impression given by horror films, Mary Shelley’s monster was actually very eloquent.
5. The first edition was published anonymously and only 500 copies were printed.
6. A copy signed by Mary Shelley and given to Lord Byron sold for more than £350,000 in 2013.
7. The book was written as a result of a challenge by Bryon for all his visitors to write a ghost story.
8. Mary Shelley may have been inspired by a visit to Castle Frankenstein on the Rhine, where a mad alchemist named Konrad Dippel had lived.
9. It was rumoured that Dippel experimented on bodies dug up from graves.
10. The first Frankenstein film was a silent movie, 15 minutes long, made in 1910 by Edison Studios.