Mary Shelley

30 August 1797 - 1 February 1851 Mary Shelley, also known as Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was a novelist best known as the author of Frankenstein.

She was born in London 30 August 1797 as the daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin. Her first story ever “Mounseer Nongtonpaw” was published in 1808. She was eleven and her father the one who published it.

Literary Life

The gothic novel Frankenstein; or, the modern Prometheus is her most famous work, up until today it has been the template for countless films, plays and stories. Her other works sometimes tend to be forgotten but they still were successful in her time. She was associated with the so-called Satanic School, headed by romantic writers as Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley. After her first novel Frankenstein, she wrote six more (see selected works). Shelley also acted as editor and publisher of her late husbands poetry and essays, and played a big part in the publishing of Lord Byrons biography. Actually, biographies were her greatest passion and she kept writing biographical essays her whole life. She also frequently wrote short stories for the gift book "The Keepsake" for ten years (gift books were literary collections of poetry and prose).

Marriage and Private Life

At the age of seventeen she eloped with well-known author and one of her father’s political followers Percs Bysshe Shelley. Together they traveled France, Germany and Switzerland. About a year before they got married their first son was born in January 1816. He died three years later. In the next six years Shelley became pregnant three more times, only one child survived – Percy Florence Shelley (born November 1819). When her husband drowned in July 1822 during their travels in Italy, her relationship to her only son became the most important and she kept travelling with him and his friends for almost the rest of her life.

In 1846 Mary Shelley started to be frequently ill, she was diagnosed with a brain tumour in 1850 and died one year later, aged 53, in London.

Selected Works

• Frankenstein; or, the new Prometheus (first edition 1818)
• Mathilda (1819)
• Valperga; or, The Life and Adventures of Castruccio, Prince of Lucca (1823)
• The Last Man (1824)
• Posthumous Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1824)
• The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck (1830)
• Lodore (1835)
• Falkner (1837)
• The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1839)

---

References

• Schor, Esther. The Cambridge Companion to Mary Shelley. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003
• "Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2010. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 22 Jan. 2010 <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/539744/Mary-Wollstonecraft-Shelley>.