Married Percy Bysshe Shelley Shelley's father hosted many of the prominent intellectuals and writers of the day, including poets Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Percy Bysshe Shelley. Although Shelley received no formal education-which was somewhat common for British girls at this time-she found consolation in intellectual pursuits, especially books. At one point, she was sent to live with family friends in Scotland for two years, probably because of conflict between her and her stepmother. Her stepmother, Mary Jane Clairmont, favored her own two children and the son she and Godwin shared over Wollstonecraft's daughters. Although her father was not particularly affectionate or attentive, Shelley did not grow up alone.Īfter Godwin remarried in 1801, Mary gained more siblings. Ten days after Shelley was born, her mother died from complications related to her birth, leaving Godwin to care for Shelley and Fanny Imlay, Wollstonecraft's three-year old-daughter from a previous relationship. Women (1792), and William Godwin, a novelist and political philosopher. Unhappy Childhood Born in London on August 30, 1797, Shelley was the daughter of two great intellectual rebels of the 1790s: Mary Wollstonecraft, an early feminist who wrote the renowned Vindication of the Rights of

Works in Biographical and Historical Context Although she wrote several other novels, along with respected nonfiction pieces, Shelley's legacy lives on through Frankenstein. This one novel has risen above the gothic and horror genres to gain recognition as a work of psychological and philosophical depth. By the age of nineteen, Shelley had created the greatest and what many believe to be the first science fiction novel in history: Frankenstein or, The Modern Prometheus (1818). Lives of the Most Important Literary and Scientific Men of Italy, Spain, and Portugal (1835–1837) Overviewīritish author Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was a skilled editor and critic, an influential travel writer, a literary historian, and a dabbler in verse as well as short stories. Frankenstein or, The Modern Prometheus (1818)

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