Mary Shelley

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, born Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, was an English novelist best known for writing *Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus* (1818), a Gothic novel that is often cited as an early work of science fiction. Beyond her own writing, she edited and championed the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley. Her father, William Godwin, was a political philosopher, and her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, was a philosopher and advocate for women's rights. Just 11 days after giving birth to Mary, her mother died, leaving her father to raise her. He gave her a broad, informal education, though he did not follow her mother's educational theories.

Mary's early life was shaped by her father's financial struggles. After her mother's death, Godwin published a memoir of Wollstonecraft that, while intended as a tribute, shocked readers by revealing her affairs and illegitimate child. When Mary was four, her father married Mary Jane Clairmont, a neighbor with two children of her own—Charles and Claire. Mary came to dislike her stepmother, who many of Godwin's friends found quick-tempered and quarrelsome. The Godwins ran a publishing business selling children's books and stationery, but it never turned a profit, forcing Godwin into heavy debt and near despair until loans from supporters like Francis Place saved him from debtor's prison.

Though she had little formal schooling, Mary's father tutored her in many subjects. He took her on educational trips and gave her access to his library and the many intellectuals who visited, including poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge and former U.S. vice president Aaron Burr. In 1814, she began a romance with Percy Bysshe Shelley, a follower of her father's politics who was already married. Together with her stepsister Claire Clairmont, Mary and Percy fled to France and traveled across Europe. When they returned to England, Mary was pregnant with Percy's child. The next two years brought ostracism, constant debt, and the death of their prematurely born daughter. After Percy's wife Harriet committed suicide, the couple married in late 1816.

That same year, the Shelleys and Claire spent a famous summer near Geneva, Switzerland, with Lord Byron and John William Polidori. There, Mary conceived the idea for *Frankenstein*. In 1818, the Shelleys left Britain for Italy, where their second and third children died before Mary gave birth to her only surviving child, Percy Florence Shelley. In 1822, her husband drowned when his sailboat sank in a storm near Viareggio. A year later, Mary returned to England and devoted herself to raising her son and to her career as a professional writer. The last decade of her life was marked by illness, likely from a brain tumor, which killed her at age 53.

Until the 1970s, Shelley was mainly known for editing her husband's works and for *Frankenstein*, which remains widely read and adapted for stage and film. More recent scholarship has revealed a fuller picture of her achievements. Interest has grown in her other novels, including the historical works *Valperga* (1823) and *Perkin Warbeck* (1830), the apocalyptic *The Last Man* (1826), and her final novels *Lodore* (1835) and *Falkner* (1837). Studies of her lesser-known writings, such as the travel book *Rambles in Germany and Italy* (1844) and biographical articles for Dionysius Lardner's *Cabinet Cyclopaedia* (1829–1846), support the view that she remained a political radical throughout her life. Her works often argued that cooperation and sympathy, especially as practiced by women in the family, were the means to reform civil society. This directly challenged the individualistic Romantic ethos promoted by Percy Shelley and the Enlightenment political theories of her father, William Godwin.