2008 Topps Allen & Ginter Mini #158🖋📜 Mary Shelley
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) is widely regarded as the first true science fiction novel, and that genre became especially fertile ground in American literature.

Her core themes strongly influenced American writers such as Edgar Allan Poe (scientific obsession and psychological consequence); Nathaniel Hawthorne (moral responsibility and unintended consequences); Herman Melville (man vs. nature, creator vs. creation); and later Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, Philip K. Dick, & Michael Crichton.
Mary Shelley was British and never stepped foot on American soil.
Notwithstanding, she had an enormous impact on American Pop Culture as her Frankenstein Monster lives on today as an American Icon. The Frankenstein Monster was Americanized through movies, comics, TV, Halloween costumes and more.

The flat-headed, bolt-necked Monster is largely an American cultural invention, not Shelley’s original description.