Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Life

Mary Shelley was born in London in August 1797, the daughter of two of the most prominent radical writers of the day: Mary Wollstonecraft, author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, and the philosopher William Godwin. Her mother died days after her birth. She grew up in her father’s household, surrounded by books and visitors from the literary and political world, and received an irregular but wide education.

In 1814, at sixteen, she left England with the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, who was already married. The couple traveled in Europe, lived under financial strain, and lost several children in infancy. They married in 1816 after the death of Percy’s first wife. That same summer, staying near Lake Geneva with Lord Byron, Mary began Frankenstein in response to Byron’s suggestion that the party each write a ghost story. The novel was published anonymously in 1818.

Percy Shelley drowned off the Italian coast in 1822. Mary returned to England with their one surviving son and supported herself by writing: further novels, including The Last Man (1826), as well as travel books, short stories, biographical essays, and editions of her husband’s poetry that did much to establish his reputation. She died in London in 1851.

Literary significance

Shelley’s standing rested for a long time almost entirely on Frankenstein, which is now treated both as a founding work of science fiction and as a major Gothic novel. Since the late twentieth century scholars have paid more attention to the rest of her work, especially The Last Man, an early novel about a global pandemic, and to her role as editor of Percy Shelley’s writings. She is now read as a serious writer in her own right rather than only as the daughter and wife of famous people.

Where to start

Frankenstein is the obvious place and the only one of her books in our catalog so far. It is short, and its frame structure and nested narrators are more approachable than its reputation suggests.