Mary Shelley

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (née Godwin; 30 August 1797 - 1 February 1851) was an English novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer, best known for her Gothic novel "Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus" (1818). She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley. Her father was the political philosopher William Godwin, and her mother was the philosopher and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft. After Wollstonecraft's death less than a month after her daughter Mary was born, Mary was raised by Godwin, who was able to provide his daughter with a rich, if informal, education, encouraging her to adhere to his own liberal political theories. When Mary was four, her father married a neighbor, with whom, as her stepmother, Mary came to have a troubled relationship.

In 1814, Mary began a romance with one of her father's political followers, the then married Percy Bysshe Shelley. Together with Mary's stepsister Claire Clairmont, Mary and Shelley left for France and traveled through Europe. Upon their return to England, Mary was pregnant with Percy's child. Over the next two years, she and Percy faced ostracism, constant debt, and the death of their prematurely born daughter.

She had four children: an unnamed daughter (February 22, 1815 - March 6, 1815), William Shelley (January 14, 1816 - June 7, 1818), Clara Everina Shelley (September 2, 1817 - September 24, 1817), and Percy Florence Shelley (November 12, 1818 - December 5, 1889), who succeeded his grandfather as the 3rd Baronet Shelley.

They married in late 1816, after the suicide of Percy Shelley's first wife, Harriet.

In 1816, the couple famously spent a summer with Lord Byron, John William Polidori, and Claire Clairmont near Geneva, Switzerland, where Mary conceived the idea for her novel "Frankenstein".

The Shelleys left Britain in 1818 for Italy, where their second and third children died before Mary Shelley gave birth to her last and only surviving child, Percy Florence Shelley.

In 1822, her husband drowned when his sailing boat sank during a storm near Viareggio. A year later, Mary Shelley returned to England and from then on devoted herself to the upbringing of her son and a career as a professional author. The last decade of her life was dogged by illness, probably caused by the brain tumor that was to kill her at the age of 53.

Scholars have shown increasing interest in her literary output, particularly in her novels, which include the historical novels "Valperga" (1823) and "Perkin Warbeck" (1830), the apocalyptic novel "The Last Man" (1826), and her final two novels, "Lodore" (1835) and "Falkner" (1837).

Aside from "Frankenstein", she also wrote another science fiction tale, "The Last Man" (1826), and several historical novels. Her novella, "Mathilda," was written in 1819, but not published until 1959.

Contracted smallpox in 1828, scarring her face for the rest of her life.

Played by Elsa Lanchester in The Bride of Frankenstein (1935), Natasha Richardson in Gothic (1986), Alice Krige in Haunted Summer (1988), Lizzy McInnerny in Rowing with the Wind (1988) and Elle Fanning in Mary Shelley (2017), among others.

Until the 1970s, Mary Shelley was known mainly for her efforts to publish her husband's works and for her novel "Frankenstein", which remains widely read and has inspired many theatrical and film adaptations. Recent scholarship has yielded a more comprehensive view of Mary Shelley's achievements.

"Frankenstein" at the Remy Bumppo Theatre Company at Theatre Wit in Chicago, Illinois was awarded the 2019 Joseph Jefferson Equity Award for Midsize Play Production.