Mary Shelley was an English novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, travel writer, and editor of the works of her husband, Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley. She was the daughter of the political philosopher William Godwin and the writer, philosopher, and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft.
Mary Shelley was taken seriously as a writer in her own lifetime, though reviewers often missed the political edge to her novels. After her death, however, she was chiefly remembered only as the wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley and as the author of Frankenstein. It was not until 1989, when Emily Sunstein published her prizewinning biography Mary Shelley: Romance and Reality, that a full-length scholarly biography analyzing all of Shelley's letters, journals, and works within their historical context was published.
In fact, Mary Shelley wrote her most iconic piece of literature when she was just 18 years old! When the novel was first published, there were many reviews bashing the premise of the story with one review by John Wilson Croker, in 1818, stating that the novel “inculcates no lesson of conduct, manners, or morality; it cannot mend, and will not even amuse its readers, unless their taste have been deplorably vitiated…”
During the summer of 1816, the weather was abysmal and Percey Shelley and Mary Godwin (at the time) traveled to Geneva, Switzerland for the season. There, Percy, Mary, their son, William, and Mary’s stepsister, Claire, happened upon Lord Bryon, who was traveling with John Polidori, his physician at the time. According to the British Library, they spent dark and gloomy summer days together discussing personal philosophies and how life is created.
Stuck together with nothing to do other than reading poetry and musing ideas with one another in their summer villa, Mary Shelley had a nightmare during one dreary night. She wrote in her author’s introduction that she dreamed of what would become Victor Frankenstein, “He sleeps; but he is awakened; he opens his eyes; behold, the horrid thing stands at his bedside, opening his curtains and looking on him with yellow, watery, but speculative eyes.”
After Frankenstein was published and readers began flocking to read the gothic horror novel centered around a scientist who creates new life through the use of galvanism, people throughout history have considered Mary Shelley to be the creator of science fiction.
When Frankenstein was first published, Mary Shelley did not attach her name to the story, and so the novel was considered anonymously written. Because of this, readers began to wonder if Percy Shelley had actually penned Frankenstein because he wrote the introduction to the story, according to Biography.
One of the more gothic facts about the creator of Frankenstein is that, when her husband died by drowning at a young age, his body was cremated, but one thing stayed put. His heart which had calcified and refused to burn, stated The New York Times. So, like the goth queen Mary Shelley is, she kept her late husband’s heart with her at all times until her passing where it was found on her writing desk beside her last work in progress, said Mental Floss.
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