(1797-1851)

Who Was Mary Shelley?

Born Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin on August 30, 1797, in London, England, Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus when she was 19, and it was published when she was 21. Literary historians credit Shelley with inventing contemporary science fiction, as she was the first writer to combine what was then known to be factual scientific knowledge with gothic fiction.

She was famous, too, for being born into a well-known, influential family and then marrying one of the most significant writers of that time, Percy Bysshe Shelley.

Shelley’s novel, Frankenstein, continues to be one of the most popular novels of all time, and still inspires movies, plays, and, of course, Halloween costumes. However, the scary character we think of as Frankenstein is a misnomer. The “Frankenstein” of the novel refers to the doctor who creates the eight-foot tall unnamed monster. In the original, the monster frightens those around him, but he is actually heartbroken because he cannot find acceptance or love. This inspires him to seeks revenge against Dr. Frankenstein.

Early Life

Shelley was the daughter of two famous philosophers and writers, William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, who wrote The Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792). Her mother died from complications of childbirth when Shelley was 11 days hold, and her father was bereft. The household also included an older half-sister, Fanny Imlay. Imlay was Wollstonecraft’s daughter from an affair she had with a soldier. Godwin knew about the affair, and later, when he published Wollstonecraft’s letters and writing, readers were shocked by his acceptance of his wife’s relationships with other men.

In 1801, Godwin married a neighbor, Mary Jane Clairmont. She brought her own two children into the union, and, later, she and Godwin later had a son. Shelley never got along with her stepmother.

Shelley’s education was informal, but striking for its power, as she made great use of her father’s extensive library. Many distinguished guests visited the household during her childhood, including poets Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth, as well as political figures such as Aaron Burr. Shelley was often reading, sometimes by her mother’s grave. She also liked to daydream, escaping from her often challenging home life into her imagination.

Shelley also found a creative outlet in writing. According to The Life and Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft, “As a child, I scribbled; and my favourite pastime, during the hours given me for recreation, was to ‘write stories.’’ She published her first poem, “Mounseer Nongtongpaw,” in 1807, through her father’s publishing company, which was never profitable and the family was always deep in debt.

Marriage, Children, and Widowhood

During the summer of 1812, Shelley went to Scotland to stay with William Baxter and his family, an acquaintance of her father’s. There she experienced a type of domestic tranquility she had never known, and she returned to the Baxters’ home the following year, feeling happy there.

However, back at home, Percy Bysshe Shelley, who was 21 and a member of the aristocracy, had written to Godwin to ask if he could be Godwin’s student. It may be that Godwin allowed Bysshe Shelley into his home in order to have a wealthy patron. When Shelley returned home, she and Bysshe Shelley fell in love. Unfortunately for everyone, Bysshe Shelley had previously eloped and had one child with another on the way. Bysshe Shelley’s father had essentially disinherited his son because of the marriage.

A few years later, accompanied by Mary’s stepsister Jane, the couple ran off to Europe. Shelley was pregnant. In response, Godwin did not speak to them for some time, even though, of course, Wollstonecraft had written an entire book about women’s freedom and the acceptability of love without marriage.

As Shelley and Bysshe Shelley traveled throughout Europe, they struggled financially. Their first child, a baby girl, lived for just a few days, and Shelley, 18 years old, was heartbroken. She wrote, “I awoke in the night to give it suck it appeared to be sleeping so quietly that I would not awake it.” In the morning, “Find my baby dead.”

Later that year, Shelley’s half-sister, Fanny, committed suicide. Then, Bysshe Shelley’s wife also committed suicide, although their daughter, Ada Lovelace, has been credited with inventing the computer. Finally, though, Shelley and Bysshe Shelley wed in December 1816.

While Shelley was devoted to her husband, they did not have an easy marriage. Their union was riddled with adultery and heartache, including the death of two more children. Their son, Percy Florence, born in 1819, was their only child to live to adulthood.

In 1822, Bysshe Shelley’s sailboat sank during a storm and he died when Shelley was only 24, so she had to support herself and her son for the rest of her life with her own writing and by promoting her husband’s work.

Writing Frankenstein and Other Works

In 1817, Shelley published a travelogue, History of a Six Weeks‘ Tour. That same year, the Shelleys moved to Italy. The following summer, the Shelleys were in Switzerland with Jane Clairmont and visited Lord Byron and John Polidori, a writer. The group entertained themselves one rainy day by reading a book of ghost stories. Lord Byron suggested that they all should try their hand at writing their own horror story. This inspired Shelley to begin Frankenstein.

Originally, it debuted in 1818 as a new novel by an anonymous author, and many readers assumed Percy Bysshe Shelley had written it since he penned its introduction. The book was an immediate success.

Shelley wrote several more novels, including Valperga and the science fiction tale The Last Man (1826). Because of Shelley’s continued influence on literature, scholars have more recently promoted her other novels, include two historical novels Valperga and Perkin Warbeck, and other novels including Lodore and Falkner. One of her novels, The Last Man (1826) would today be considered dystopian. It is about the only man to survive a horrifying 21st century plagued who has not managed to save another person with whom he can live.

Shelley also wrote more travel diaries, including Rambles in Germany and Italy, and, like her parents, was always politically radical—even disagreeing with her father and husband, in magazine articles. She believed that qualities often attributed to women, such as cooperation, were more politically important than power.

After Bysshe Shelley’s death, Shelley wrote her own literature, and devoted herself to promoting her husband's poetry and preserving his place in literary history. For several years, Shelley faced some opposition from her late husband’s father who had always disapproved his son’s bohemian lifestyle.

Later Years and Death

Shelley died of brain cancer on February 1, 1851, at age 53, in London, England. She was buried at St. Peter's Church in Bournemouth, laid to rest with the cremated remains of her late husband's heart. After her death, her son Percy and daughter-in-law Jane had Mary Shelley’s parents exhumed from St. Pancras Cemetery in London (which had fallen into neglect over time) and had them reinterred beside Mary at the family’s tomb in St. Peter’s in Bournemouth.

Frankenstein Movies and Shelley Biopics

Shelley’s lasting legacy is, of course, Frankenstein. Its themes—the ability of humans to create life and the struggle between people and their living creations—still resonate. Frankenstein’s first theatrical adaptation was in 1823 and it was first filmed as a dramatic movie in 1910. Over the 20th century, there were dozens of versions presented on stage, in film, and on TV, both in live action and animation. Some of the most famous interpretations were done by Boris Karloff, Mel Brooks, Javier Bardem, and even the Three Stooges. A staged production of the story starring Benedict Cumberbatch as Dr. Frankenstein and Jonny Lee Miller as the monster was also a hit. Most recently, in 2025, a version by Guillermo del Toro premiered at the Venice International Film Festival.

Meanwhile, since the 1950s, filmmakers and writers began to pay more attention to Mary Shelley herself. In 1986, a horror film, “Gothic,” starring Natasha Richardson, explored the famous writing contest that helped to inspire Shelley. Then, in 1994, Kenneth Branagh released the film “Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.” In that film, Robert DeNiro played a heartbroken and tragic monster. Later, in 2018, a biography, “Mary Shelley,” starring Elle Fanning, was released.

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QUOTES

  • As a child, I scribbled; and my favourite pastime, during the hours given me for recreation, was to 'write stories.'
  • I am an unfortunate and deserted creature; I look around, and I have no relation or friend upon earth.
  • I beheld the wretch, the miserable monster I had created.