Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft, << WUL stuhn `kraft` >> (1797-1851), was an English author. Shelley wrote the famous Gothic horror novel Frankenstein (1818).
Shelley was born on Aug. 30, 1797, in London. Her family name was Godwin. Her father was the radical philosopher William Godwin, and her mother was Mary Wollstonecraft, an early feminist. When she was 16, Mary met the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. Although Shelley was married, she ran away with him. They were married after Shelley’s first wife died in 1816. That same year, while the Shelleys were visiting the poet Lord Byron in Geneva, Mary conceived the idea for Frankenstein.
Percy Shelley drowned near Livorno (sometimes called Leghorn), Italy, in 1822. To support herself and her children, Mary wrote novels, including Valperga (1823), The Last Man (1826), and the autobiographical Lodore (1835). She also edited her husband’s poetry. Mary spent much of her later life trying to seek her own identity in relation to those of her famous parents and husband. She died on Feb. 1, 1851.
