Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Mary Shelley was born August 30, 1797 and died February 1, 1851. Her nationality was British. By the time she was nineteen, Mary had written one of the most famous novels ever published, Frankenstein; which was published in 1818.

She also wrote six other novels, a novella, mythological dramas, stories and articles, various travel books, and biographical studies. By 1851, the year of her death, she had established a reputation as a prominent author independent of her famous husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley.

Eleven days after her birth, her mother Mary Wollstonecraft died of puerperal fever, leaving her father William Godwin to take care of her and her half-sister Fanny. The day after her funeral, Godwin began to sort through Mary Wollstonecraft’s papers, and by September he had begun to work on the story of her life. Mary became his favourite child. He called her “pretty little Mary”. Mary’s attachment to her father was to become intense and long lasting. Three years after Mary Wollstonecraft’s death, William met and married Mary Jane Clairmont. Mary Shelley’s relationship with her step-mother was strained. Mary Jane resented Mary’s affection for her father and became very jealous of her. Not only did she begin demanding Mary to do household chores, she also invaded Mary’s privacy and opened her letters. Nor did she encourage her love for reading and writing. Mary never received any formal education. Fortunately, she had access to her father’s excellent library. Her favourite pastime as a child was to “write stories”. As Mary became a young woman, the tension between her and Mary Jane intensified. In the summer of 1812 Godwin sent his precious only daughter to visit William Baxter, an acquaintance who l...

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... his 1783 investigations in animating frog legs with electricity were mentioned specifically by her as part of the reading list that summer in Switzerland. One night, perhaps attributable to Galvani's report, Mary had a waking dream; she recounted the episode in this way: “My imagination, unbidden, possessed and guided me, gifting the successive images that arose in my mind with a vividness far beyond the usual bounds of reverie…I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together—I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half-vital motion…What terrified me will terrify others; and I need only describe the spectre which had haunted my midnight pillow.” This nightmare served as the basis for the novel that she entitled Frankenstein.