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Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley ( UK: / ˈwʊlstənkrɑːft /; née Godwin; 30 August 1797 – 1 February 1851) was an English novelist who is best known for writing the Gothic novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818), which is considered an early example of science fiction. [2]
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was an English Romantic novelist who is best known as the author of Frankenstein, a text that is part Gothic novel and part philosophical novel and is also often considered an early example of science fiction.
- Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley is best known for writing Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818, revised 1831), a text that is part Gothic nove...
- Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s best-known book is Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818, revised 1831). She wrote several other novels, incl...
- Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s father was William Godwin, a noted social philosopher, political journalist, and religious Dissenter, and her mother...
- Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (née Godwin) met the young poet Percy Bysshe Shelley in 1812 and ran off with him to France in July 1814. The couple we...
- Early Life
- Elopement and Authorial Beginnings
- Frankenstein
- Italian Years
- Widowhood
- Literary Style and Themes
- Death
- Legacy
- Sources
Mary Shelley was born in London on August 30, 1797. Her family was of reputable status, as both her parents were prominent members of the Enlightenment movement. Mary Wollstonecraft, her mother, is well-known for writing A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), a pivotal feminist text that frames women’s “inferiority” as a direct consequence of...
Mary and Percy’s relationship was especially tumultuous at its inauguration. With part of the money Shelley had promised Godwin, the couple eloped together and left England for Europe on July 28, 1814. They took Mary’s stepsister Claire along with them. The three traveled to Paris and then continued on through the countryside, spending six months l...
That spring, in 1816, Mary and Percy traveled with Claire again to Switzerland. They were going to spend the summer at the Villa Diodati with Lord Byron, the famed poet and pioneer of the Romantic movement. Byron had had an affair with Claire in London and she was pregnant with his child. Along with baby William and Byron’s physician John William P...
Despite this success, the family was struggling to get by. Percy was still evading the duns, and the threat of losing custody of their children was hanging over the couple’s heads. Because of these reasons, along with poor health, the family left England for good. They traveled with Claire to Italy in 1818. First they went to Byron to pass on Clair...
Mary had to figure out how to deal with the financial pressures that now fell on her shoulders alone. She lived for a bit with Leigh Hunt in Genoa, and then returned to England in the summer of 1823. Byron helped her out monetarily, but his generosity was short lived. Mary was able to work out an agreement with her father-in-law, Sir Timothy, to su...
Literary Pioneer
Mary Shelley effectively created a new genre—science fiction—in writing Frankenstein. It was revolutionary to fuse the already established Gothic tradition with Romantic prose and modern issues, namely the scientific ideals of the Enlightenment thinkers. Her work is inherently political, and Frankenstein is no exception, in meditating upon Godwinian radicalism. Concerned with the age-old theme of hubris, questions of societal progress and aspiration, and the visceral expression of the sublime...
Social Circle
Mary’s husband Percy Shelley was a major influence. They shared journals and discussed their work and edited each other’s writing. Percy was, of course, a Romantic poet, living and dying upon his beliefs in radicalism and individualism, and this movement is exhibited in Mary’s oeuvre. Romanticism followed the idealist philosophers, the likes of Immanuel Kant and Georg Friedrich Hegel, as Europe began to conceptualize sense as it arose from the individual to the external world (instead of the...
Scope
Mary Shelley was also remarkable in the range in her body of work. Her most famous novel, Frankenstein, is an exercise in horror, in the gothic tradition as well as the harbinger of the science fiction genre. But her other novels extend throughout the gamut of literary traditions: she published two travelogues, which were fashionable during her lifetime. She also wrote historical fiction, short stories, essays, dabbled in verse and drama, and contributed author biographies to Lardner’s Cabine...
From 1839 on, Mary struggled with her health, frequently enduring headaches and bouts of paralysis. However, she did not suffer alone—after Percy Florence finished his schooling, he returned home to live with his mother in 1841. On April 24, 1844, Sir Timothy died, and the young Percy received his baronetcy and fortune and he lived then on very com...
Mary Shelley’s most obvious legacy is Frankenstein, a masterpiece of a modern novel that spurred a literary movement to engage with the complicated web of societal mores, individual experience, and the technologies one faces in an uncompromisingly "progressive" civilization. But the beauty in that work is its flexibility—its ability to be read and ...
Eschner, Kat. “The Author of 'Frankenstein' Also Wrote a Post-Apocalyptic Plague Novel.” Smithsonian Magazine, Smithsonian Institution, 30 Aug. 2017, www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/author-franke...Lepore, Jill. “The Strange and Twisted Life of ‘Frankenstein.’” The New Yorker, The New Yorker, 9 July 2019, www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/02/12/the-strange-and-twisted-life-of-frankenstein.“Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley.” Poetry Foundation, Poetry Foundation, www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/mary-wollstonecraft-shelley.Sampson, Fiona. In Search of Mary Shelley. Pegasus Books, 2018.- Julia Pearson
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Apr 2, 2014 · Writer Mary Shelley published her most famous novel, Frankenstein, in 1818. She wrote several other books, including Valperga (1823), The Last Man (1826), the autobiographical Lodore (1835) and...
Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is an 1818 novel written by English author Mary Shelley. Frankenstein tells the story of Victor Frankenstein, a young scientist who creates a sapient creature in an unorthodox scientific experiment.
- Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley
- 1818
Jun 5, 2023 · Mary Shelley was a remarkable writer and woman whose contributions to literature and science continue to inspire and fascinate people. Born in London in 1797, she led a life full of personal and professional challenges, yet managed to create some of the most enduring works of literature of the Romantic era.
Oct 26, 2017 · Mary Shelley combined science and the supernatural to write 'Frankenstein,' the world’s first science-fiction novel. October 26, 2017. • 10 min read. Born on a dark and stormy night,...
