Mary Shelley

Facts Mary and Percy Shelley's first child, a girl, died when she was only a few days old, in 1815. Mary's half-sister Fanny committed suicide, and soon after Percy's wife did as well, leaving Mary and Percy free to marry. Mary and Percy Shelley married in December 1816. In 1818   Frankenstein , or the Modern Prometheus was published anonymously. Mary and Percy moved to Italy, and they had two more children that did not survive. In 1819 their fourth child Percy Florence was born. He was the only one of their four children to survive and grow to adulthood. In 1822 Percy Shelley died in a drowning accident while sailing in the Gulf of Spezia. Mary Shelley was a widow at 24. She continued to write in an effort to support herself and her child. Mary Shelley's novel   Valperga :   Or the Life and Adventures of Castruccio ,   Prince of Lucca , was published in 1823. Mary Shelley's novel   The Last Man   was published in 1826. Mary

Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void, but out of chaos. Life and death appeared to me ideal bounds, which I should first break through, and pour a torrent of light into our dark world. My dreams were all my own; I accounted for them to nobody; they were my refuge when annoyed - my dearest pleasure when free.                                                                                           Marry Shelley Frankenstein  (1818) The different accidents of life are not so changeable as the feelings of human nature. I had worked hard for nearly two years, for the sole purpose of infusing life into an inanimate body. For this I had deprived myself of rest and health. I had desired it with an ardour that far exceeded moderation; but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart. Live, and be happy, and make others so. We are unfashioned creatures, but half ma

                                              Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay                                              To mould me Man, did I solicit thee                                              From darkness to promote me? In the summer of 1816, a young, well-educated woman from England traveled with her lover to the Swiss Alps. Unseasonable rain kept them trapped inside their lodgings, where they entertained themselves by reading ghost stories. At the urging of renowned poet Lord Byron, a friend and neighbor, they set their own pens to paper, competing to see who could write the best ghost story. The young woman, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, took the prize, having composed a story creepy enough not only to take its place alongside the old German tales that she and her Alpine companions had been reading, but also to become a bestseller in her time and a Gothic classic that still resonates with readers almost two centuries later. Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin

  Mary Shelley's portrait by  Richard Rothwell , shown at the  Royal Academy  in 1840, accompanied by lines from  Percy Shelley 's poem  The Revolt of Islam  calling her a "child of love and light" . Reginald Easton's miniature of Mary Shelley is allegedly drawn from her  death mask.  

History of a Six Weeks' Tour (1817)  Frankenstein (1818)  Matilda (1820)   Valperga (1823)   The Last Man (1826)   The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck (1830)   Lodore (1835)  Falkner (1837)  Rambles in Italy and Germany (1844)