Essay about The Life and Writing of Mary Shelley

If I was to describe Mary with one word it would be misfortunate. Ever since birth she has been facing problems after problems. Two weeks after birth, Mary’s mother, Mary Wollstonecraft past away due to a severe fever.

Mary Shelley was a young, well-educated woman from England. She was born on August 30th 1797, in London. Her mother Mary Wollstonecraft, was the author of “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman”. She died giving birth to Mary, leaving her daughter in the care of her husband, William Godwin. The atmosphere that Mary Shelley grew up in exposed her to cutting-edge ideas, which are shown all throughout the novel. Mary Shelley’s lover, Percy Shelley was a young poet, and as he was already married, her relationship with him wasn’t the smoothest.

Born as Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin to William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft on August 30, 1789, Mary was the only child of her father and mother.

Two years passed, and Mary had bore Percy two children; one died a month after birth, and the other died at five months old. This was just the beginning of the tragedies in Mary's life.

Within two years she had published the novel Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus (1818). Shelley came from well-to-do family, highly educated, and liberal background. She was married to poet and philosopher Percy Shelley, and during a bleak summer of 1816, “the couple famously spent a summer with Lord Byron, John William Polidori, and Claire Clairmont near Geneva, Switzerland” (Wikipedia). Because the weather was rather confining, they remained inside, and decided to tell each other ghost stories to pass the time away. What manifested that faithful night became two legendry tales of horror and science gone wrong, as mentioned in Guy Haley’s book Sci-Fi Chronicles, “Polidori produced a short story, The Vampyre, which was more influential initially and provided the impetus for the creation of the modern vampire myth, but it was the 19-year-old Mary who produced a novel that would come to be regarded as the first work of science fiction“ (Haley 19).

Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, later known as Mary Shelley, was born in Somers Town, London, England on August 30, 1797. ("Mary Shelley Biography.") Born to William Godwin, a journalist, philosopher, and novelist, and Mary Wollstonecraft, an educator, and feminist philosopher. Sadly, her mother died eleven days after giving birth to Shelley, from puerperal fever.

     Mary Godwin was born in London in 1797 to prominent philosopher William Godwin and well-known feminist and author Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin. Shortly after Mary's birth, her mother died of complications from childbirth, and this event set the stage for the strained relationship between Mary and her

In Forbidden Knowledge by Roger Shattuck, Mary Shelley's background is discussed further. She was swept off her feet by Percy Shelley at the age of seventeen. Without being married she lived in an irregular household of men who were intent upon achieving glory through their genius. Lord Byron was one such individual. "Surrounded by illegitimate births and infant deaths, they subsisted on high ideals to remake the world through liberation and revolution" (Shattuck 84). It was the hollowness and vanity of these high ideals that Mary Godwin was reacting to when she wrote Frankenstein.

Doctor Cline recommended she be sent to Ramsgate. She stayed for six months in the

Four years later, William Godwin married Mary Jane Clairmont and moved his new wife and her two children into his home. Two years later, Clairmont gave birth to William Clairmont Godwin, providing William Godwin with a male heir and displacing Mary Godwin even further from her father (“Mary Shelley”). Although Mary reflected negatively on these events later in life, Mary Clairmont provided her stepdaughter with her first publication, Mounseer Nongtongpaw, at age eleven through her publishing house gifted by William Godwin. Things quickly changed, however, when Mary was sent to Scotland in the summer of 1812 in what would become a two year sabbatical. In her 1831 preface to Frankenstein, Mary wrote that during these two years “(her) true compositions,

In 1814, she started dating poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. Percy was a student of William Godwin. However, Mary and Percy could not marry because Percy was still married to his first wife, and later they fled to England with Mary’s stepsister Jane. This made Mary’s father very angry that she left.

had created a monster instead of a human. He left it and ran off. When

A women who wrote “Frankenstein” named, Mary Shelley, she was born August 30, 1797, in London, England. Mary Shelley came from a rich literary heritage. She was the daughter of William Godwin, a political theorist, novelist, and publisher. Her ideas to write Frankenstein cameon summer of 1816, Mary and his brother Percy visited the poet Lord Byron at his villa beside Lake Geneva in Switzerland. Stormy weather finally forced them going indoors, while the other guests read a volume of ghost stories. So there, Mary's story became Frankenstein when she was only 19 years old.Frankenstein was published in 1818, when Mary was 21, and

By the novel, Mary discusses several issues related to relationships which terrorize aspects of her personal life, including birth and childhood, the death of her mother, her miscarriage and new child and her coming across with the events which occurred in the summer of 1816 (see notes).

In 1823, Mary returned to England with her son. That’s when she really began to write. She wanted to pursue in becoming a writer. Her father-in-law helped with this. He wanted to keep the family name in becoming successful. Soon, Mary caught herself falling in love again with a man named Byron, which was an old friend of the family. The began to see each other a lot, then they began to grown apart and he died in 1824. He helped a lot with the publishing of her books. February 1, 1851, Mary died from a brain tumor in London at her home. Her son and his wife arranged for Mary to be buried next to her parents in a nonreligious service.