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John Lauritsen makes the case that Frankenstein was not written by Mary Shelley, but by a great poet who deliberately concealed his authorship. Lauritsen's new book, The Man Who Wrote Frankenstein disintegrates the Mary Shelley myth, demonstrating that Frankenstein is not just a scary story, but a work of profound and radical ideas.

The conventional belief is that Frankenstein was written by the young Mary Shelley, who took part in a ghost-story contest in Geneva. In his book, John Lauritsen explains that Frankenstein was written by one of the greatest poets in the English language, who deliberately concealed his authorship.

John Lauritsen, a member of the Boston Athenaeum, studied English Literature and Social Relations at Harvard. A retired market research analyst, his writings have won him an international reputation.