Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

   Mary Shelley was born on August 30, 1797 in London. She was the child of two very popular intellectual rebels of the 1790s, William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft. Eleven days after giving birth to Mary her mother sadly died leaving her and her half-sister Fanny Imlay with their father. Although later on her father remarried to Mary Jane Vial, young Mary and her stepmother never experienced a very smooth relationship. Although she was never sent to a boarding school like her other half sister Jane, she spent much of the time enjoying the readings that her father had in his library.

   Some ten years later Mary met Percy Bysshe Shelley, a young poet, and married in May of 1814. Mary was only 20 years old when she wrote Frankenstein. Although this was her most famous writing, it was also the on that received the most criticisms and through the years has been remade and published thousands of times.

In 1818 she moved to Italy with her husband until his death in 1822.  After the death of her son William, she was unable to recover composure and suffered a nervous a nervous breakdown. Her daughter, also died the year before.  Continuing her downward spiral she then suffered a miscarriage which almost claimed her life.  Shelley never remarried.  

   She wrote many other novels but none compared to the success that she received from Frankenstein.  During the period of realism she wrote short stories and periodicals, one travelogue and began a biography on her late husband but never finished.  Mary Shelley died of brain cancer on February 1, 1851 at the age of 53.