Frankenstein did not arrive fully formed from a stormy summer. Its paper trail shows Mary Shelley turning an early story into a novel through notebooks, revisions, and successive fair copies.
Shelley began the lost first version in 1816. The surviving draft notebooks, written in 1816 and 1817, preserve most of the text that appeared in the 1818 novel; Percy Bysshe Shelley also contributed edits. The archive distinguishes their handwriting, allowing readers to follow the work across different hands without collapsing collaboration into a simple authorship claim.
The draft was reshaped from a two-volume plan into the three-volume form sent to the printer. Only part of the later fair copy survives. What remains is not just a record of inspiration, but of making: pages moved, sentences revised, and a story built toward publication.