Mary Wollenstonecraft Shelley
Author
Everyone knows the story of Frankenstein, but what most people don’t know is that this genre-investing novel was written by 18-year old Mary Shelley in 1818!
Mary Shelley, born Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin in 1797, was the second child of feminist philosopher and educator, Mary Wollstonecraft. Wollstonecraft died only ten days after Mary’s birth, and she was brought up by her father, William Godwin. In 1801, William married Mary Jane Clairmont, a well-educated woman with two children of her own. William’s friends disliked his new wife, describing her as difficult and quick-tempered, but he was devoted to her and the marriage was successful. Mary also detested her stepmother.
Although Mary did not receive much formal education, her father, a writer himself, often took the children on educational outings and allowed them access to his extensive library and the many intellectuals who visited him. Mary had a governess, a tutor, and read many of her father’s books on Roman and Greek history. In one of his books, her father described her desire for knowledge as “great, and her perseverance in everything she undertook, almost invincible.”
In 1815 Mary visited Germany, stopping in Gernsheim, 11 miles from Frankenstein Castle, where an alchemist had performed experiments two centuries before. She then traveled through Switzerland, where most of the Frankenstein story takes place. In 1816, Mary, her then-lover, Percy Shelley, and Lord Byron had a competition to see who could write the best horror story. After days of thinking, Mary was inspired to write Frankenstein, the story of a scientist who created life but was horrified by what he’d made. A complex story, the novel had an enormous influence on literature, and in 1818, Mary Shelley was considered the first science fiction writer. What makes this all the more remarkable is that women in the 1800s were severely oppressed.