Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (1797 – 1851), later Mary Shelley, is an English woman of letters, novelist, biographer and travelogue, best known for her work Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus .
Meet Percy Shelley
Born August 30, 1797, Mary is the daughter of feminist philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft and political writer William Godwin. Her mother died 11 days after her birth from puerperal fever. William remarried four years later to a woman who already had two children. Mary receives a quality education from her father, who educates her himself. She has access to the family library and rubs shoulders with the intellectuals who visit them. In 1812, his father sent him to the dissident family of radical William Baxter in Scotland. She likes it and develops her writing there.
In 1814, between two trips to Scotland, she met the poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley. At odds with his wife, Harriet, he frequently visits William Godwin. Mary and Percy then begin a relationship, which William disapproves of. In July, they flee to France, leaving behind Percy's pregnant wife. During their trip, they read, keep a common diary and also each work on their own writings. In September, however, lack of money forces them to return.
Frankenstein
The situation, on their return to England, will be most complicated. Mary has indeed fallen pregnant, her father no longer wants to see her and Percy is ruined. They move to London with Claire Clairmont, sister-in-law of Mary, and continue their intense activities of reading, writing and meeting intellectuals.
Percy's happiness at the birth of his son with his wife Harriet is all the more cruel to Mary as her own daughter, two months premature, dies shortly after birth. The ordeal is terrible for the young woman, but she becomes pregnant again and recovers little by little. In 1816, she gave birth to a little William. In the summer of that same year, with friends including the poet Lord Byron – of whom Claire Clairmont was pregnant – they discussed the experiments of Erasmus Darwin, who claimed to have revived dead matter; it was then that Mary had the idea for Frankenstein.
Percy and Mary move to Bath together. In December, Percy's wife is found drowned and her suicide is covered up. Percy and Mary then marry to obtain custody of Harriet's children. Early in the summer of 1817, Mary Shelley completed Frankenstein; the book is published anonymously and critics assume it is by Percy, since he prefaced it. She has a daughter the same year. Mary then writes an account of their 1814 voyage.
Successive dramas
In 1818, to escape creditors, they were forced to flee to Italy, taking with them Claire Clairmont and her daughter. Two dramas mark this trip:the death of her daughter in 1818, then that of her son in 1819. Mary Shelley sinks into depression, isolates herself from her husband and takes refuge in writing. At the end of 1819, she gave birth to her 4th child but would mourn the other 3 all her life. In Italy, the Shelleys live very productive years. But in July 1822, Percy disappeared during a sailing trip and his body was washed up on the shore.
In 1823, Mary returned to England and moved in with her father with her son, Percy Florence. Poor and rejected by some of her acquaintances who disapproved of her affair with Percy, she tries hard to survive. She published her husband's poems and, between 1827 and 1840, published and edited several novels. She rejects advances and marriage proposals and is mainly concerned with the well-being of her son, to whom she provides a good education. Devoted to his mother, Percy Florence traveled with her and installed her in his home when he married in 1848.
The last years of Mary Shelley were altered by illness, starting in 1839. She died at the age of fifty-three, on the 1 st February 1851.