Mary Shelley.

Political philosopher William Godwin and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft had a daughter, Mary Godwin, born August 30, 1797 in London. Wollstonecraft died days after the birth. Raised by her father, Mary received an informal but rich education encouraging liberal political ideas. At age four, her father remarried, creating a strained relationship with her stepmother. These early experiences shaped her radical worldview.

In 1814, sixteen-year-old Mary began a romance with the already-married Percy Bysshe Shelley. Together they eloped to France with her stepsister Claire Clairmont. The couple married in 1816 after Shelley’s first wife’s suicide. That same summer, at Lord Byron’s Villa Diodati near Geneva, Byron challenged the group to write a ghost story. Mary’s nightmare inspired Frankenstein, published in 1818 when she was 20. The novel became a landmark of Gothic and science fiction. She later edited and promoted Percy’s poetry and wrote her own novels: Valperga 1823, The Last Man 1826, Perkin Warbeck 1830, Lodore 1835, and Falkner 1837. She also contributed travel writing and biographies.

Mary Shelley married Percy Bysshe Shelley in late 1816. The couple had four children: an unnamed daughter born and died in February 1815, William Shelley 1816–1818, Clara Everina Shelley 1817–1817, and Percy Florence Shelley 1818–1889, who inherited the baronetcy. Her husband drowned in 1822 off Viareggio. After returning to England, she devoted herself to raising her son and writing. She contracted smallpox in 1828, which scarred her face. A brain tumor caused her death on February 1, 1851 at age 53.

Frankenstein remains Mary Shelley’s defining work, spawning numerous film adaptations including the 1931 classic starring Boris Karloff. The novel’s themes of creation, responsibility, and isolation continue to resonate. In 1975, she shared the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation for Young Frankenstein. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame inducted her. Her later works like The Last Man now stand as early examples of apocalyptic fiction. Her grave at St Peter’s Church in Bournemouth lies alongside her father, William Godwin.