including the very notion of such a reiterated self-justification as Victor is presenting
(see III:6:21 and note), it would not be surprising to see this remark as a recasting
of his fine distinction between truth and the "willing suspension of disbelief" in
literature (see Biographia Literaria, Chapter 14). But, in fact, there is no assurance
that Mary Shelley would have come upon the formulation in time to have inserted it
into the novel. P. B. Shelley is recorded as having finished Coleridge's Biographia
Literaria on 8 December 1817. Frankenstein was advertised as published on 1 January
1818.