Mary Shelley Frankenstein Biograph

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was born in 1797 in a family of two of England's leading intellectual radicals. (Father) William Godwin, (mother) Mary Wollstonecraft; who sadly died 10 days after giving birth to Mary Shelley. When Mary became the tender age of 4 her father remarried. Mary having no formal education but was encouraged by her father to read the books from their well-stocked library. In 1816 Mary eloped to France with her soon to be husband; Percy Shelley. They were living near the poet Lord Baron and his doctor friend John Polidori on Lake Geneva in the Swiss Alps.

After reading ghosts stories to one another, Byron suggested that they each try to write a ghost story themselves. For days Mary could not think of a plot. Until she overheard Percy and Lord Byron talk about creating life artificially with electricity, and that was the first step in writing Frankenstein.

Mary finished her novel a year later and it was published in 1818, Mary was 19 years old. Many reviewers thought Percy wrote Frankenstein because he wrote the preface. In 1831 Mary Shelley's name was attached in the 1831 edition for which she wrote the introduction. Percy Shelley died in 1822 in a boating accident. Mary Shelley had four children and three died as infants. Many critics have said that life and death were in Mary's mind whilst writing Frankenstein. Marry Wollstonecraft Shelley died in 1854/1855 but her gothic novel to this day is becoming as popular as ever, being included in some schools curricular studies.