Answer:
The influences on the story, as presented in the preface of 1818 by Shelley, are "Dr. Darwin's theory, scientific developments, and German philosophers who were experimenting with ghost stories."
Explanation:
The preface of Frankenstein written in 1818 is attributed to Mary Shelley's husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley. In the preface, Shelley writes about the influence that gave birth to the novel.
He writes that they were influenced by Dr. Darwin's theory of evolution, which was popular during the 1800s. The other influences include scientific developments which led the author to think that dead things can be brought back to life through such developments. Another major influence on the story was the stories that a group of writers reads while they were on vacation in Geneva. During that time, German philosophers were experimenting with ghost stories, so after reading those stories, the writers proposed a competition among themselves and Mary Shelley penned her first novel, at the age of twenty-one– Frankenstein.
