Detail from the Racehorse and Carcass forcing through the Ice, August 10th, 1773

Joseph Mallord William Turner after John Robert Cozens. Mont Blanc from the banks of the Arve, near Sallenches in Savoy. c.1792-3. watercolour over graphite. 231 mm x 376 mm. British Museum Department of Prints and Drawings. 1958,0712.387.

In building A Frankenstein Atlas, our team has gone back to these early modern chorographical texts for inspiration. For each site that Mary Shelley describes in Frankenstein, we are creating a multilayer description that not only codes the novel (see A Frankenstein Atlas: Schema), but one which helps the reader imagine place as Mary Shelley and her readers may have conceived of it at the time of the book’s publication. In effect, we are creating what scholars in Historical GIS refer to as a “deep map.