Eight stamps mark the 200th anniversary of the publication of the genre-defining novel, Frankenstein.
The stamp sheets give the discerning collector access to all the printer's marks and any additional information on the selvedges. The selvedges include the traffic lights which is a term used by collectors to denote the check dots (or colour dabs) printed in the sheet margins of stamps printed by modern offset litho or photogravure methods. They assist in checking that all the colours have printed correctly.
Most of our selvedge sheets also contain a plate number; a numeral, occasionally with a letter suffix, usually inscribed on the sheet margins to denote the plate from which the stamps were printed - for example 1A.
All our mint/cto products are carefully prepared by our own team and supplied in glassine bags to ensure you receive them in pristine condition.
Frankenstein is a Gothic novel written by Mary Shelley (1797 - 1851), which she started writing when she was 18 years old and published anonymously on 1 January 1818. Shelley travelled to Geneva in 1816 with her future husband, Percy Shelley as well as friends Lord Byron and John Polidori. Due to the dismal weather, which left the group shut in their villa, Byron suggested they hold a horror-story writing competition. After several nights of intense thought, Mary Shelley went to bed and dreamt of a young man obsessed with creating life. This led to her writing the horror story which eventually became the novel Frankenstein. Since 500 first edition copies were printed by a small publishing house in London, the novel has never been out of print and has been adapted numerous times for stage and screen. The novel has become so embedded in our culture that the word 'Frankenstein' even appears in the Oxford English Dictionary, defined as 'a thing that becomes terrifying or destructive to its maker.' Eight stamps and a 3D lenticular Miniature Sheet mark the 200th anniversary of the publication of the novel.