Paradise Lost, John Milton's epic poem, was originally published in 1667 in ten books,
then revised by its author into the twelve-book form in which we read it today shortly
before his death in 1674. Containing the major creation myth of modern Europe, its
impact on Frankenstein is major and discernible from beginning to end. In the immediate
context of the Creature's discovery rather than of Mary Shelley's intertextual conception
of her novel, however, what is most significant is how he reads the epic as a key
to his self-understanding, even perhaps his self-fashioning.