Mary Shelley

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, née Godwin (30 August 1797 – 1 February 1851) was an English novelist who wrote the Gothic novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818). She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley. Her father was the political philosopher William Godwin and her mother was the philosopher and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft.

Shelley's mother died less than a month after giving birth to her. She was raised by her father who was able to provide her with a rich if informal education, encouraging her to adhere to his Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, née Godwin (30 August 1797 – 1 February 1851) was an English novelist who wrote the Gothic novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818). She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley. Her father was the political philosopher William Godwin and her mother was the philosopher and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft.

Shelley's mother died less than a month after giving birth to her. She was raised by her father who was able to provide her with a rich if informal education, encouraging her to adhere to his own anarchist political theories. When she was four, her father married a neighbour with whom Shelley came to have a troubled relationship.

In 1814, Shelley began a romance with one of her father's political followers, Percy Bysshe Shelley, who was already married. Together with her stepsister, Claire Clairmont, she and Percy left for France and travelled through Europe. Upon their return to England, Shelley was pregnant with Percy's child. Over the next two years, she and Percy faced ostracism, constant debt and the death of their prematurely born daughter. They married in late 1816, after the suicide of Percy Shelley's first wife, Harriet.

In 1816, the couple famously spent a summer with Lord Byron, John William Polidori and Claire Clairmont near Geneva, Switzerland, where Shelley conceived the idea for her novel Frankenstein. The Shelleys left Britain in 1818 for Italy, where their second and third children died before Shelley gave birth to her last and only surviving child, Percy Florence Shelley. In 1822, her husband drowned when his sailing boat sank during a storm near Viareggio. A year later, Shelley returned to England and from then on devoted herself to the upbringing of her son and a career as a professional author. The last decade of her life was dogged by illness, most likely caused by the brain tumour which killed her at age 53.

Until the 1970s, Shelley was known mainly for her efforts to publish her husband's works and for her novel Frankenstein, which remains widely read and has inspired many theatrical and film adaptations. Recent scholarship has yielded a more comprehensive view of Shelley's achievements. Scholars have shown increasing interest in her literary output, particularly in her novels, which include the historical novels Valperga (1823) and Perkin Warbeck (1830), the apocalyptic novel The Last Man (1826) and her final two novels, Lodore (1835) and Falkner (1837). Studies of her lesser-known works, such as the travel book Rambles in Germany and Italy (1844) and the biographical articles for Dionysius Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia (1829–1846), support the growing view that Shelley remained a political radical throughout her life. Shelley's works often argue that cooperation and sympathy, particularly as practised by women in the family, were the ways to reform civil society. This view was a direct challenge to the individualistic Romantic ethos promoted by Percy Shelley and the Enlightenment political theories articulated by her father, William Godwin. ...more

Mary Shelley Books

Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Her Daughter Mary Shelley

Mary's Monster: Love, Madness, and How Mary Shelley Created Frankenstein

The Mortal Immortal: The Complete Supernatural Short Fiction of Mary Shelley

In Search of Mary Shelley: The Girl Who Wrote Frankenstein

The Lady and Her Monsters: A Tale of Dissections, Real-Life Dr. Frankensteins, and the Creation of Mary Shelley's Masterpiece

The Monsters: Mary Shelley and the Curse of Frankenstein

Young Romantics: The Tangled Lives of English Poetry's Greatest Generation

Her Lost Words: A Novel of Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley

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Lists

The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein by Kiersten White

Frankenstein lives again! by Donald F. Glut

Essential Monster of Frankenstein, Vol. 1 by Gary Friedrich

Frankenverse

38 books — 7 voters

The Complete Stories and Poems by Edgar Allan Poe

Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie

Poe Party

13 books — 3 voters

Magnus, Robot Fighter 4000 A.D., Vol. 1 by Russ Manning

Attack on Titan Omnibus 1 by Hajime Isayama

Monster Hunters, Vampire Killers and Dragon Slayers In Comics Part III

100 books — 1 voter

Love, Sex & Frankenstein by Caroline Lea

The Monsters We Deserve by Marcus Sedgwick

Mary Shelley in Fiction

48 books — 10 voters

Mary Shelley in YA & Middle Grade Fiction

60 books — 16 voters

McSweeney's Enchanted Chamber of Astonishing Stories by Michael Chabon

La Bataille des Hulders by Maria Johnsen

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button by F. Scott Fitzgerald

An Authors List: They Wrote Science Fiction and Fantasy?

112 books — 3 voters

Related Genres

Horror
Hoŕror
Mary Wollstonecraft
Percy Bysshe Shelley
William Godwin

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Quotes Tagged “Mary Shelley”

“ You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings. ”
― Mary Shelly, Frankenstein

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“ Letter II To Mrs. Saville, England. Archangel, 28th March, 17—. How slowly the time passes here, encompassed as I am by frost and snow! Yet a second step is taken towards my enterprise. I have hired a vessel and am occupied in collecting my sailors; those whom I have already engaged appear to be men on whom I can depend and are certainly possessed of dauntless courage. But I have one want which I have never yet been able to satisfy, and the absence of the object of which I now feel as a most Letter II To Mrs. Saville, England. Archangel, 28th March, 17—. How slowly the time passes here, encompassed as I am by frost and snow! Yet a second step is taken towards my enterprise. I have hired a vessel and am occupied in collecting my sailors; those whom I have already engaged appear to be men on whom I can depend and are certainly possessed of dauntless courage. But I have one want which I have never yet been able to satisfy, and the absence of the object of which I now feel as a most severe evil, I have no friend, Margaret: when I am glowing with the enthusiasm of success, there will be none to participate my joy; if I am assailed by disappointment, no one will endeavour to sustain me in dejection. I shall commit my thoughts to paper, it is true; but that is a poor medium for the communication of feeling. I desire the company of a man who could sympathise with me, whose eyes would reply to mine. You may deem me romantic, my dear sister, but I bitterly feel the want of a friend. I have no one near me, gentle yet courageous, possessed of a cultivated as well as of a capacious mind, whose tastes are like my own, to approve or amend my plans. How would such a friend repair the faults of your poor brother! I am too ardent in execution and too impatient of difficulties. But it is a still greater evil to me that I am self-educated: for the first fourteen years of my life I ran wild on a common and read nothing but our Uncle Thomas' books of voyages. At that age I became acquainted with the celebrated poets of our own country; but it was only when it had ceased to be in my power to derive its most important benefits from such a conviction that I perceived the necessity of becoming acquainted with more languages than that of my native country. Now I am twenty-eight and am in reality more illiterate than many schoolboys of fifteen. It is true that I have thought more and that my daydreams are more extended and magnificent, but they want (as the painters call it) keeping; and I greatly need a friend who would have sense enough not to despise me as romantic, and affection enough for me to endeavour to regulate my mind. ...more ”
― Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein

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