The Carnival of the Animals and xylophone. From the beginning, Saint-Saëns regarded the work as a piece of fun. On 9 February 1886 he wrote to his publishers Durand in Paris that he was composing a work for the coming Shrove Tuesday, and confessing that he knew he should be working on his Third Symphony, but that this work was "such fun" (). He had apparently intended to write the work for his students at the École Niedermeyer, but it was first performed at a private concert given by the cellist Charles Lebouc on Shrove Tuesday, 9 March 1886. A second (private) performance was given
The Man Who Wrote Frankenstein Shelley as shown by several letters. "The Man Who Wrote Frankenstein" includes a favorable review of "Shelley's Fiction" (1998) by Phyllis Zimmerman, a book in which Zimmerman argues for Percy Bysshe Shelley's authorship of "Frankenstein", and a short bibliography of books and articles about Percy Bysshe Shelley and "Frankenstein". Lauritsen praises poet Edmund Blunden's "" (1946), calling it the best short biography about Percy Bysshe Shelley. "The Man Who Wrote Frankenstein" was first published in 2007 by Pagan Press. "The Man Who Wrote Frankenstein" was praised by the critic Camille Paglia, who wrote in "Salon" that "Lauritsen assembles an overwhelming