Mary Shelley

Her mother was the famed feminist Mary Wollstonecraft who was the author of The Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792). She often read at her mother’s grave which inspired her imagination to write stories. Today, in 2025, we are still reading her published masterpiece.

She was Mary Shelley.

Mary was born on August 30th, 1797, in London, England. Her father was the philosopher William Godwin and her mother was the feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft, who died of puerperal fever a few days after giving birth to her daughter. Mary Shelley never knew her mother but still inherited her excellent intellect.

William found it difficult to care for Mary and her older half-sister, Fanny, on his own so he married Mary Jane Clairmont, who already had two children of her own. In time, the couple also had a son together. Mary never got on with her stepmother, who may have been jealous of the father-daughter relationship. Even though she sent her own daughter to school, Mary’s stepmother saw no need to educate her stepdaughter. None of this dampened Mary’s love for books, reading and writing.

“As a child, I scribbled; and my favourite pastime, during the hours given me for recreation, was to ‘write stories’” — Mary Shelley.

Mary began a relationship with the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley in 1814. He was a devoted student of her father but soon turned his attention to Mary. Percy was married though so, with Mary and her step-sister Claire, fled England in the same year to travel Europe. Naturally, her father disapproved and father and daughter did not talk for quite some years.

Mary was 16 and Percy was 21.

The young party travelled Europe but struggled financially. Mary lost a baby girl who only lived for a few days. In Switzerland, the ‘Shelley’s’, Claire, Lord Byron and John Polidori entertained themselves during one rainy day by telling each other ghost stories, reading out of a book. Lord Byron had the idea of each person writing their own horror story, and it was at this time that Mary began work on “Frankenstein” or “The Modern Prometheus”.

Two suicides followed Mary. One was her half-sister Fanny and the other was Percy’s wife. In December 1816, Percy and Mary finally got married. Along with other published works, Frankenstein debuted as a new novel ‘from an anonymous author’. Percy had written the introduction and, because 'women did not write such horror stories', it was taken for granted that he had written the novel.

The book was a great success!

The married Shelley’s now moved to Italy, where Percy Florence was born. He was Mary’s only child (out of 4) to live to become an adult. Although Mary was devoted to her husband, the marriage was riddled with adultery and heartache. In 1822, Mary’s life changed with the ultimate tragedy. Percy was out sailing with a friend in the Gulf of Spezia when there was an accident and Mary’s husband drowned.

At the young age of 24, Mary was a widow and now had to support her son as well as herself. She wrote and published several novels, as well as devoting her time to promoting her husband’s poetry. She was determined to preserve Percy Shelley’s place in literary history.

Mary died of brain cancer in London, England, on February 1st, 1851, at the age of 53. She was buried at St.Peter’s Church in Bournemouth, laid to rest with the cremated remains of her late husband’s heart.

It is interesting that Frankenstein was written by a woman. The novel ‘explores’ the idea of man playing God by ‘creating’ a life. Women have the ability to ‘create’ life in their wombs when they carry children. I have often wondered if there was any connection in Mary’s mind but we’ll never really know.

The novel “Frankenstein” covers so many ‘topics’, from the moral implications of blindly following scientific knowledge to the feelings of loneliness, rejection and the need for companionship.

It is to her credit that Mary Shelley was eventually recognized as the author of this unique novel Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus.

During her life, Mary had always shown an interest in science and medicine, often attending lectures on anatomy and doing experiments at home. This can definitely be seen in her work Frankenstein.

Mary Shelley has often been called the ‘Mother of Science fiction’, and her name lives on as a symbol of creativity, resilience and innovation.