The problem for those venturing to comment on the Frankenstein manuscripts was the difficulty of getting to grips with their contents. It would take an expert conversant with the manuscripts of both to produce an authoritative account of the Frankenstein drafts. The critical history of Frankenstein teaches us anything, it is that the most important piece of evidence in any discussion about its authorship is the manuscript. Charles E. Robinson supplemented his transcriptions, which distinguished Percy Bysshe Shelley's contributions to the text, with the first detailed chronology of composition, publication, and afterlife of the novel, a masterwork. Robinson presented a text of the novel drawn exclusively from manuscript. In The Original Frankenstein, Robinson presented a text of the novel drawn exclusively from manuscript. For the first time it became possible to read the novel exactly as Mary Shelley had written it, distinct from her husband's interventions.