Mary Shelley

Mary Shelley (London, 1797–1851) is one of the most important and influential writers of the 19th century. She was the daughter of the renowned revolutionary thinker William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, a pioneer of modern feminism and author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), who died just ten days after giving birth to her daughter.

At sixteen, Mary—then still known as Wollstonecraft Godwin—met the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, and together they soon set off on a long journey across Europe, culminating in the famous summer of 1816 in Switzerland, where they stayed with Lord Byron, Dr. Polidori, and Mary’s cousin. It was during those nights that she conceived her magnum opus, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus—one of the most widely read and studied novels in history, whose legendary origin has inspired much literature.

Widowed at just twenty-five, she continued to write and publish novels such as The Last Man (1826) and Falkner (1837), while devoting herself to her only surviving son until her death in 1851.