Author Biography
Reading Outside of the Lines
Mary Shelley
Genre or Accomplishment
Mary Wollsteonecraft Godwin was born in 1797, the daughter of author Mary Wollstonecraft (who wrote Vindication of the Rights of Woman) and radical philosopher William Godwin. Raised by her father following her mother's early death, her education came through contact with her father's intellectual circle and her own reading. She met poet and author Percy Bysshe Shelley in 1812, married him in 1814, and, in response to a bet among her husband's circle of friends, wrote Frankenstein in 1816. Mary bore four children, three of whom died in infancy. Her husband died in 1822, and she returned to England with her surviving son to support herself as a writer of novel, short stories, and travelogues, and as the editor of her husband's works. She died in 1851.
