THE THEN WIDESPREAD BELIEF
that people who appeared to
be dead might in fact be alive
inspired both Frankenstein and
1844’s “The Premature Burial”
by Edgar Allan Poe (above, an
illustration by Harry Clarke from
a 1919 edition of Poe stories).Before the age of science, the
boundary between the living and
the dead was explored through
the use of the supernatural.Opposite: In a 19th-century
engraving, Elizabethan
necromancers John Dee and
Edward Kelly conjure a spirit.26 LIFE FRANKENSTEIN
INTERFOTO/MARY^EVANSMA
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EVA
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