Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s greatest and most well known works came to her at a very young age. She was still in her teens and just barely an adult. So with little life experience (at least compared to other popular authors who were being published in their thirties and forties) the question remains, who r what influenced Mary so greatly that she would compose a novel that would bring her fame and even criticism for centuries to come? The three most important people, that probably influenced her the most, are the people who were closest to her: Mother (Mary Wollstonecraft), Father (William Godwin), and Husband (Percy Shelley).

                Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley’s mother, did not live very long after her second daughter, Mary’s, birth. Shelley had one half-sister Fanny and then shortly after her mother gave birth to her [Mary] she died of a fever (two weeks later to be exact). Though Mary Wollstonecraft was not around for her daughter Mary’s upbringing the notoriety of her works and whatever may have been passed on through genetics did remain.

                Mary Wollstonecraft was a woman who was rebellious for the time period, and with feminist ideals she published many writings that encouraged equal rights for men and women. She wrote and published such novels and essays as “Maria,” “A Vindication of the Rights of Men,” “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman,” and “The Wrongs of Women: or Maria.” This relationship that was left posthumously for her young daughters to connect with did affect her greatly, although indirectly.

                Mary Shelley’s father, William Godwin, was an extremely popular political essayist of the time. He also found something intriguing about the feminist movement (though still different from that of her mother) and also encouraged Mary to be educated and to be on the same level of any other man. This is true, so much so in fact, that Mary was quite literally left alone to teach herself around her father’s circle of literary critics of the time. Some of these included: Hazlitt, Lamb, and Coleridge. It is in this way that Mary eventually meets her future husband Percy.

                Percy becomes a big part of her influence because she ran away with him when she was so young. Not only was she surrounded by wonderful writers when she lived with her father, but not she was again surrounded by great writers when she lived with Percy. The couple even became closely linked with Lord Byron. Many of the essays that the Shelley’s published were during this time and were joint accounts of their lives together.