Luther College professor Amy Weldon’s ‘Creature’ novel braids the life of Mary Shelley, author of ‘Frankenstein,’ with Shelley’s famous character

Amy Weldon, professor of English at Luther College and co-director of the Luther College Writers Festival, is proud to announce that her fifth book, “Creature: A Novel of Mary Shelley and Frankenstein,” was recently released and is available at bookstores and online.

Weldon’s “Creature” is based on the life of English novelist Mary Shelley. It interweaves her little-known life journey with that of her most famous character, the “creature” created by Swiss scientist Victor Frankenstein in Shelley’s 1818 novel “Frankenstein.” Shelley’s classic novel, a precursor to the horror and science-fiction genres, asks readers to question societal norms of birth, bodies and those we call “monsters.”

Amy Weldon is a professor of English at Luther College.

“When Mary Shelley began writing ‘Frankenstein’ in the summer of 1816, she was a 19-year-old single mother with one dead and one living child, in love with a married man and haunted by the legacy of her mother, a famous English feminist who died giving birth to her,” Weldon said. “But when she was awakened suddenly from a dream in which a scientist was animating a giant semi-human being, giving it life, she obeyed that dream. She started writing and she kept writing until the end of her life.”

Traveling from London to Italy and into a technological future, Weldon’s “Creature” blends historical realism and literary magic to show how a bookish, haunted girl learns to confront her monsters by bringing them to life.

“Shelley battled every one of the fears and insecurities any one of us might battle today,” Weldon said. “And she wrote a book that — much like Victor Frankenstein’s ‘Creature’ himself — will never die. People will be reading ‘Frankenstein’ as long as they are reading books.”

Weldon’s admiration for Shelley started when Weldon was attending graduate school at the University of North Carolina. Through her own path as an English professor and author, Weldon’s admiration for Shelley has only deepened through the years.

“What she did with this novel, especially in her time, at her age, is a real achievement,” she said.

An Alabama native, Weldon joined the Luther faculty in 2005. Since 2013, Weldon has taught the January Term study-abroad course “In Frankenstein’s Footsteps: The Keats-Shelley Circle in London, Geneva, and Italy” to Luther students. This three-week course follows the path of Shelley as she wrote “Frankenstein” through London, Geneva, Venice, Florence and Rome.

“Teaching that course helped me and students walk through the locations in which I was literally able to set scenes and characters. For example, without ‘In Frankenstein’s Footsteps,’ I still might never have made it to Venice, on which I drew heavily for the setting of an episode that’s under-reported in Mary Shelley’s life: the death of her second daughter,” Weldon said.

Through the writing process, Weldon encountered many challenges, including the limitations of encapsulating Shelley’s “vast and marvelous life into a single book.” An early draft of “Creature” was 236,000 words. The final published version is roughly half that size.

“I had to compress, elide and sometimes just pass over some things. But it was important to me that I treat her whole life, her entire creative life — not just ‘Frankenstein,’ and not just her marriage to [Percy Bysshe] Shelley and the loss of their children — as fully as I can,” Weldon said. “Students ask me, ‘Why is ‘Frankenstein’ the novel you’re obsessed with? When did this obsession start?’ I find it weirdly difficult to remember. It seems like this novel has always been a part of my bloodstream, always been something I’ve known.”

Weldon has written four other books. Her next book, “A Thing of Beauty: Reading the Romantics in a World on Fire,” is scheduled for publication by Bloomsbury Academic in 2027.

“Creature: A Novel of Mary Shelley and Frankenstein” was published by Sea Crow Press and released on March 25, 2025. Copies are available both online and at the Luther College Book Shop.

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