Say “David Copperfield,” and most people will think of the 1850 novel by Charles Dickens, not the 1935 film directed by George Cukor. Say “Pride and Prejudice,” and most people will think of the 1813 novel by Jane Austen, not the 1940 film directed by Robert Leonard. But say “Frankenstein,” and most people will think of the 1931 film directed by James Whale, not the 1818 novel by Mary Shelley. And say “Boris Karloff,” and all anyone thinks of is Frankenstein.

Why should Whale’s film so overshadow Shelley, and so dominate Karloff’s career? And why should it be one of the very few films of Hollywood’s golden age that is known to video game-playing kids of today? Is the movie so much better than the book that the former should so overshadow the latter?

Um, no. The book is a masterpiece that has had its standing among 19th-century novels obscured by the film’s being such a monument of 20th-century pop culture. It’s not like “The Magnificent Ambersons,” where the Orson Welles film’s reflected glory has elevated the standing of Booth Tarkington’s novel. It’s true that Tod Browning’s “Dracula” overshadows Bram Stoker’s novel; the difference is that the novel is a masterpiece. The situation of Shelley’s novel is thus unique.

One thing to keep in mind is that the Frankenstein “meme,” if you will, underwent more than a century of mutation before culminating in Whale’s film. And it’s interesting to consider whether Shelley’s genius resides not only in producing an individual masterpiece, but in creating a mutable meme that could resonate with the public’s varied concerns for the next 188 years – and counting. Not to mention make a lad from Enfield into one of the most recognized names of the 20th century.

When it was published, anonymously, in 1818, “Frankenstein” was widely interpreted as social and political commentary, and as a romantic excursus upon the perils of industrialization and scientific progress. It was, indeed, for many the clarion of romanticism, and taken very seriously by some as a subversive tract. Dr. Victor Frankenstein, the “Modern Prometheus” (in the subtitle of the novel), collects body parts, each beautiful, that when put together to form a new being form something that is anything but beautiful.

Actually, the monster is at first very sympathetic. He views human affairs from a distance, and longs to be accepted into the race, and for communion with another. To that end, he embarks on a program of self-improvement. He reads Milton. It doesn’t work.There’s that problem of physical hideousness, you see, that sends everyone running off when he approaches. (It was no less true then that having read Milton doesn’t improve your Match.com response rate.) It is only after he knows he will never fulfill his longing that the monster, heretofore sympathetic, becomes a murderer. Shelley’s choice of Milton as reading material for the monster is significant: In “Paradise Lost” Satan is so struck by Eve’s beauty that he becomes momentarily good, and embarks upon his project of bringing down humanity only when he realizes such beauty as Eve’s shall never be his.

Before “Frankenstein,” there had been “gothic” novels, to be sure, but perhaps none in which the evil is manufactured by a self-important and selfdeluding scientist. (Brian Aldiss cites “Frankenstein” as the first science fiction novel.) The period 1816-18, in which “Frankenstein” gestated, bears a marked similarity to our own time, in that a widespread subject of discussion and public debate was the possibility of manufacturing life, something many intelligent people thought science was on the very verge of being able to do. Today, of course, we think the same thing, with considerably more empirical justification.

Almost immediately after “Frankenstein” was published, its basic story became part of the popular culture in Britain and America. Stage versions, often only very loosely based on Shelley’s novel, appeared in 1823, 1824, 1826, 1849, 1887, and 1927. Frankenstein’s monster was also a popular subject for prints. The first film version of the story was made by Thomas Edison in 1910.The 1931 film was based not on Shelley’s novel but on the 1927 stage version, by Peggy Webling. By the time Whale got his hands on the story, it had been through the wringer of popular culture. But as a fascinating 1997-98 exhibition sponsored by the National Institutes of Health made clear, each version of the story seems to speak to a special concern of the age, the story adjusted therewith.

For example, in the years leading up to the 1931 film, there was a great deal of public discussion of artificial organs and eugenics, and what this all meant for our understanding of life and death. In the film,Victor Frankenstein curiously becomes Henry Frankenstein. The monster is not the cultivated chap he is in the novel. And so on. Nonetheless, make-up artist Jack Pierce’s version of the monster was a dazzling piece of image-making, together with Karloff’s performance. Director Whale, like Karloff an Englishman, is newly famous as an icon of gay culture, made so through his portrayal in Christopher Bram’s novel “Father of Frankenstein” and its 1998 film version, “Gods and Monsters,” starring Ian McKellen as Whale.

After the runaway success of the film “Frankenstein,” Whale made “Bride of Frankenstein” in 1935. Almost all cinephiles consider it superior to the earlier film. In it, Mary Shelley, Percy Shelley, and Lord Byron appear as characters! The film’s conceit is Mary’s telling the other two what happens to Dr. Frankenstein and the monster following the end of the first story. Of course, Mary tells us what happens from the close of the 1931 film, not from the close of her novel, which after all has been cut to shreds. Elsa Lanchester, who plays the monster’s bride (the title, mind you, refers not to her but to Dr. Frankenstein’s bride, Elizabeth, played by an 18-year-old Valerie Hobson), also plays Mary Shelley.

As for Boris Karloff, the subject of a Film Forum retrospective through February 9, he was born in London in 1887 (36 years after Shelley’s death). His original name was William Henry Pratt, and he grew up in the London borough of Enfield. His father was a civil servant, and his great-aunt was Anna Leonowens, tutor to the hereditary prince of Siam, whose story formed the basis of “Anna and the King of Siam”and “The King and I.”Boris attended London University in preparation for a career in the diplomatic service, but turned to acting and moved to Canada, where he appeared in a variety of provincial productions, honing his craft. In 1919 he was living in Los Angeles and started to act in films for Universal.

The public seems first to have taken notice of him in Howard Hawks’s 1931 prison melodrama, “The Criminal Code” (screening February 8). Following the great success of Browning’s “Dracula” starring Bela Lugosi, Universal decided to follow it up with “Frankenstein” (February 4 & 5). Lugosi was offered the role of the monster, but turned it down. Karloff got his big break. In 1932 he appeared in Hawks’s “Scarface” and in 1934 worked for John Ford on “The Lost Patrol” (February 8). But he was typecast as a horror movie star, and appeared in 1932’s “The Mummy” (February 5), Whale’s 1932 “The Old Dark House” (February 7), 1933’s “The Ghoul,” Edgar Ulmer’s 1934 “The Black Cat” (February 7, also starring Lugosi), “Bride of Frankenstein” (February 5), 1936’s “The Man Who Changed His Mind,” 1939’s “Son of Frankenstein,” and 1944’s “House of Frankenstein.” And let’s not forget 1949’s “Abbott & Costello Meet the Killer, Boris Karloff.”

Karloff did some good work, but he could never shake Frankenstein. From 1931 to the day he died, in 1969, he was known as Frankenstein’s monster – or, as the public would have it, as Frankenstein. He found a welcome among a couple of independent-minded filmmakers in the 1960s, Roger Corman and Peter Bogdanovich, in the latter of whose 1969 “Targets” (February 9) Karloff made his last screen appearance. There are actors, there are stars. And then there are the embodiments of memes.

Until February 9 (209 W. Houston Street, between Sixth Avenue and Varick Street, 212-727-8110).