Mary Shelley
Mary Wollenstonecraft Godwin Shelley was the only daughter of William Godwin and Mary Wollenstonecraft, a quite dynamic pair during their time. Mary Shelley is best known for her novel Frankenstein: or The Modern Prometheus, which has transcended the Gothic and horror genres that now has been adapted to plays, movies, and sequels. Her life though scattered with tragedies and disgrace, was one of great passion and poetry, which I find quite fascinating, but not desirable. Shelley’s other literary works were mildly successful their time, but are little known today. Her reputation rests, however, on what she once called her “Hideous Progeny,” Frankenstein. To understand her writing you must first know her background starting from her parent’s lives prior to her birth. Her mother, Mary Wollenstonecraft an early feminist, who, in1792, published A Vindication of the Rights of Man. This was an excellent book that showed Mary W. was way ahead of her time. Two years later she had an illegitimate child Fanny Imlay by the American industrialist Gilbert Imlay. After her failed relationship with Imlay, Wollenstonecraft met the political philosopher and novelist William Godwin in 1796. Five months
This idea is what lead to the actual creation of Frankenstein. First, the suicide of her half-sister Fanny in October; then on December tenth the discovery of the body of Percy’s wife Harriet, who, very pregnant from an affair, had drowned herself in the Serpentine River. After Percy’s death, melancholy and hardship marked Mary Shelley’s life as she struggled to support herself and her son. She likewise, supervised the publication of her husband’s Posthumous Poems, which appeared in 1824, his Poetical Works (1839), and his prose (1839 and 1840). into her next pregnancy with Mary, she and William decided to marry to ensure their child’s legitimacy even though they were both opposed to the institution of matrimony. During the four years they spent in Italy Percy became established as one of the most prominent poets in the English language. After Frankenstein, the novel The Last Man (1826) is Mary Shelley’s best known work. This period likewise furthered the career of Mary Shelley as “The Author of Frankenstein,” the axiom, which she continued with her anonymous publication with a second novel, Valpegra: or, The Life and Adventures of Castruccio, Prince of Lucca (1823). The group spent several days and nights together in the Villa Diodati at Coligny, where discussions sometime around the middle of June about “ the principle of life” inspire the “waking dream” that became the central scene in Frankenstein Upon her return to England in September of 1816, Mary quickly developed the novel she started during the summer. Importantly, Davy and Nicholson were the two foremost experimenters with galvanic electricity in the early nineteenth century who later had a noticeable impact on the writing of Frankenstein. In July 1814, one month away from her seventeenth birthday, Mary and Percy along with Claire eloped to the continent. They continued on to Switzerland, Holland, and Germany. Leigh Hunt once characterized Mary as “four-famed - - for her parents, her lord / And the poor lone impossible monster abhorr’d. Percy, Mary, William, and Claire joined Lord Byron and John Polidori, at Lake Geneva in Switzerland in May. In addition to producing four novels after Percy’s death, Mary contributed a series of biographical and critical sketches to Chamber’s Cabinet Cyclopedia, as well as occasional short stories to the literary annuals of the day.
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London Mary’s,
June November,
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wife harriet,
november 1812,
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Acceptance Essays
