Mary Shelley

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (August 30, 1797 - February 1, 1851) was an English writer who is most famously remembered as the author of Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus.

Mary Shelley was born in London, England to Mary Wollstonecraft and the atheist William Godwin. She married the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley in 1816 after the suicide of his first wife.

She began work on Frankenstein in 1816 when staying at Lord Byron's villa on Lake Geneva in Switzerland. She incorporated a number of different sources into her work, not the least being the Promethean myth from Ovid. The influence of John Milton's Paradise Lost can also be discerned within the novel.

Mary edited and annotated her husband's works after his death in 1822 and also wrote a few more novels, none of which even begin to approach the fame and lasting power of Frankenstein with the possible exception of The Last Man, an intelligent novel of the distant future.

Mary Shelley was interred in St. Peter's Churchyard, Bournemouth, Dorset, England.

External Links

e-texts of some of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's works:

• Frankenstein (http://www.abacci.com/books/book.asp?bookID=722)
• Proserpine and Midas (http://www.abacci.com/books/book.asp?bookID=2437)