Frankenstein (Mary Shelley, 1831)

The author was from a then well known literary family; had a quite unstable and unusual married life. She hung around with folks like Lord Byron. These two plus some other literary types were stuck in a rainy spell while on extended holiday near Lake Geneva, and challenged each other to write ghost stories as a diversion. "Frankenstein" grew out of this effort.

Gothic, strange, quick read, enjoyable. Not sure of the take-away, but at a minimum (as an old commercial put it), clearly it's never a good idea to fool with mother nature.

Three long narratives are included from slightly different perspectives - the tale of the narrator; who then hears Frankenstein's tale directly from Frankenstein; and the narrator then hears the monster's tale from Frankenstein (with a finishing flourish direct from the monster).

Awful things happen throughout. It's not hard to see how this became widely read, and transmuted into various pop culture formats.

By the way, I hadn't realized how the monster had learned language etc. (not having had a chance at a formal education). Among his learning opportunities, the monster had access to three books - one of which of course was Goethe's "The Sorrows of Young Werther," the massively influential book described here. The monster apparently sympathized with Werther's version of being "romantic."