Mary Shelley (1797–1851) is the English writer who, at nineteen, conceived Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, often called the first science-fiction novel. The daughter of the feminist Mary Wollstonecraft and the philosopher William Godwin, and the wife of the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, she also wrote The Last Man, travel books and short stories, and edited her husband's poems.
Works
Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus
A famous inheritance
Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin was born in London on 30 August 1797. Her mother, the author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, died eleven days later. She was raised by her father, the radical philosopher William Godwin, and his second wife, in a house frequented by writers; as a child she listened, hidden behind a sofa, to Coleridge reciting The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
She received no formal schooling but read widely in her father's library. In 1814 she met Percy Bysshe Shelley, a young admirer of her father who was already married. At sixteen she left for the Continent with him, accompanied by her stepsister Claire Clairmont.
The summer of 1816
In the summer of 1816 the Shelleys stayed near Lake Geneva, close to Lord Byron, who had rented the Villa Diodati. That year, after a volcanic eruption in Indonesia, was so cold and rainy that it was called the year without a summer. Confined indoors, the group read German ghost stories, and Byron suggested that each of them write one.
Mary struggled for days. Then, she later wrote, after a conversation about galvanism and the possibility of reanimating a corpse, she saw in a waking dream a pale student kneeling beside the thing he had put together. Her short story grew into a novel, published anonymously in January 1818. Byron's physician, John Polidori, wrote The Vampyre in the same competition.
Loss and exile
Mary married Percy Shelley in December 1816, after his first wife drowned herself. Their life in Italy, from 1818, was marked by grief: three of their four children died young. Only Percy Florence, born in 1819, survived. In July 1822 Shelley drowned when his boat sank in a storm off the coast near Lerici.
Widowed at twenty-four, Mary returned to England and lived by her pen to support her son. She wrote novels, including The Last Man (1826), about a plague that destroys humanity, contributed to encyclopedias, and edited Shelley's poems with notes that did much for his reputation. In 1831 she published a revised Frankenstein with a new introduction telling the story of its creation.
The legacy of Frankenstein
Mary Shelley died in London on 1 February 1851, probably of a brain tumour. She was buried in Bournemouth between the remains of her parents, which her son had brought there.
Frankenstein was adapted for the stage as early as 1823 and has never stopped inspiring theatre, film and debate. In the novel the creature is nameless, articulate and well read; the familiar image of a mute monster with bolts in his neck comes from the 1931 film. The scientist's name, Victor Frankenstein, is now often given to his creation.
Anecdotes
Her husband's heart
After Shelley drowned in 1822, his body was cremated on the beach at Viareggio in the presence of Byron and their friend Edward Trelawny. Trelawny pulled from the flames a part, possibly the heart, that would not burn, and it ended up with Mary. After her death it was found among her belongings, wrapped in a copy of one of Shelley's poems.
Two hundred years of the creature
The novel was first published anonymously, and many reviewers assumed that the author was Percy Shelley, who had written its preface; the book was dedicated to William Godwin. Mary's name appeared on the title page only with the second edition of 1823.
Frequently asked questions
How old was Mary Shelley when she wrote Frankenstein?
She began the story in June 1816, at eighteen, and finished the novel the following year. It was published in January 1818, when she was twenty.
Is Frankenstein the monster?
No. Victor Frankenstein is the young scientist; the being he creates has no name in the novel and is called the creature, the fiend or the monster.
Who were Mary Shelley's parents?
Mary Wollstonecraft, author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, and the philosopher and novelist William Godwin.