Mary Shelley was born in London on August 30th 1797. Mary was born to William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft. Both William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft were radical writers, her mother specializing in feminist writings. Mary Wollstonecraft died only 10 days after giving birth to Mary Shelley, from puerperal fever.
At the age of
19 in 1816, Mary Shelley married Percy Bysshe
Shelley, in Italy
where the two would reside until Percy's death only 6 years later. At the start
of their relationship Percy was already married to a woman, and married Mary
when his pregnant wife was found drowned in a local river, after being missing
for nine days.
One year prior to their nuptials Marry Shelley gave birth to a premature daughter, Clara, who died at birth. The child is Percy Shelley's, but was kept quiet because they were not married. One year later Mary gave birth to another child, William. One year after the birth of William, Mary gave birth to her second daughter, whom she also named Clara. Clara died just a few months later from dysentery that she contracted during a trip to Este. Two years after Clara's death, her son William died from Malaria. Six months after the death of her third Child, Mary Shelley gave birth to another son, Percy Florence, her fourth child. Percy Florence is the only child of Percy and Mary Shelley that lived through adulthood.
In the
midst of her childbirths and marriage to Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Shelley
began her well-known story "Frankenstein". While on a boating tour of
Lake Geneva, Mary Shelley congered up images and ideas for her story, which is
based in Lake Geneva. On January 1st 1818 at the young age of 21, Mary
Shelley's well known story Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus was
published in three volumes.
The story of Frankenstein's monster has inspired
over 50 films.
On July 1st 1822 Percy Bysshe Shelley and Edward Williams sailed to Leghorn in Shelley's boat, the Don Juan, to meet their friends. On July 8th, they began their return journey and, sometime during the voyage, drown in the Gulf of Spezia. Their bodies were found ten days later. Percy was cremated. The death of her husband was so traumatic Mary Shelley miscarried her fifth child only a few days later. The miscarriage was especially dangerous because Mary hemorrhaged, almost killing her.
In her
life Mary wrote and published over 30 works. Her later works include LODORE
(1835) and FAULKNER (1937), both romantic stories, and unfinished MATHILDE
(1819, published 1959), which draws on her relations with Godwin and Shelley.
VALPERGA (1823) is a romance set in the 14th-century, and THE LAST MAN (1826)
depicts the end of human civilization, set in the 21st century republican
England. Its second part describes the gradual destruction of the human race by
plague. The story is narrated by Lionel Verney, the last man of the title,
living amidst the ruins of Rome. Feminist critics have paid attention to its
fantasy of the total corrosion of patriarchal order.
Mary Shelley died at age 53 in her home at Chester Square, London, on February 1st 1851. The remains of Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin were to be moved from St. Pancras to the churchyard at St. Peters, Bournemouth, and on February 8th, Mary Shelley was buried between her parents.
On December 5th 1889 Mary's only surviving child, Percy Florence Shelley dies.
For a list of works by Mary Shelley, click here; WORKS