Subjects:
Mary Shelly was born in 1797 to Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Godwin. Mary's mother, Mary Wolstonecraft Godwin was a prominent, respected British writer who wrote on liberal subjects of which she felt very strongly about. She died tragically while giving birth to Mary (Branagh, 11). Her father, Arthur was also an English writer, but not as prosperous as his late wife, or held in as high a regard as his daughter Mary would later become (Branagh, 11). Mary's literary career began with short stories she would write as a teenager. She would write behind the church where her parents were married, and near the grave of her late mother (Florescu, 38). It is reported that she wrote there because she hoped for the spirit of her moth
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"What terrified me, will terrify others. The reviewer said this of the novel: ". My readers have nothing to do with these associations. I have an affection for it, for it was the offspring of happy days, when death and grief were but words which found no true echo in my heart. William later died at the age of two in 1818, from unknown causes (Branagh, 14).
As reflected in many of her writings, Mary Wolstonecraft Shelley led a basically tragic life.
At the age of seventeen, through a friend of her father's, she met the famous English poet Percy Bysshe Shelly, then age twenty-two.
And now, once again, I bid my hideous progeny go forth and prosper. Polidori's The Vampyre, which is believed to have inspired Bram Stoker to write his Dracula novel in 1897 (Skal, 84); and perhaps the greatest horror story ever written, Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley (Branagh, 14).
It is the opinion of the writer that the tragic life of Mary Shelley greatly influenced her writing of the novel Frankenstein. Frankenstein was finally completed in April 1817, and then first published on March 11, 1818 by a publishing house in England (Branagh, 15).
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