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Mary Shelley was born on August 30, 1797 in London, England, the only daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft and the famous liberal philosopher, anarchic journalistA journalist is a person who practices journalism that is, who creates reports as a profession for broadcast or publication in mass media such as newspapers, television, radio, magazines, documentary film, and the Internet. Origin and scope of the term In and atheistAtheist" redirects here. For the music group, see Atheist (band). Atheism is the condition of lacking theistic belief. Etymology The term atheism (French atheisme from athee meaning atheist, from Greek atheos, meaning godless : a-, without; + , theos, mea dissenterThe term dissenter (from the Latin dissentire "to disagree"), labels one who dissents or disagrees in matters of opinion, belief, etc. In the social and religious history of England and Wales, however, it refers particularly to a member of a religious bod, William GodwinWilliam Godwin ( March 3, 1756 April 7, 1836) was an English political and miscellaneous writer, considered one of the important precursors of both utilitarian and anarchist thought. He is also famous for the women in his life: he married the early femini.
She met Percy Bysshe Shelley, a free-thinker like her father, on June 26June 26 is the 177th day of the year (178th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 188 days remaining. Events 684 Benedict II becomes Pope. 1483 Richard III becomes king of England. 1819 The bicycle is patented. 1924 American occupying forces leav, 1814Events January 14 Denmark cedes Norway to Sweden January 29 French army of Emperor Napoleon I wins the Battle of Brienne January 31 Gervasio Antonio de Posadas becomes Supreme Director of Argentina. February Congress of Chatillon see George Hamilton Gordo at her mother's gravestone. They eloped to France a month later, on July 27, with Mary's stepsister, Jane Clairmont. This was the poet's second elopement and, later, second marriage (his first wife, Harriet Westbrook committing suicide in 1816).
Percy Shelley is renowned for his deep desire for 'true love' in his life. He was, evidently, more than satisfied with his young bride, exultant that she was "one who can feel poetry and understand philosophy".
At about this time, Mary had probably become quite influenced by the classics which her husband had taken to reading after they returned to London towards the end of the year. But this was also the time that Percy Shelley wrote " Alastor" and " The Spirit of Solitude ", in which he counsels aginst the loss of "sweet human love" in exchange for the activism that he himself was to promote and indulge in for much of his life.
During May of 1816, the couple, with Jane (now Claire) Clairmont in tow, took to the Geneva lakeside to meet Lord Byron, with whom Claire had been conducting an affair.
In terms of English literature, it was a to be a halcyon summer. Percy began work on "Hymn To Intellectual Beauty" and "Mont Blanc". Mary, in the meantime, had been inspired to write Frankenstein.
The group had decided to have a ghost-telling contest. Another guest, Dr John Polidori, came up with "The Vampyr", later to become a strong influence on Bram Stoker's Dracula. Mary's story proved to be more successful.
Mary had incorporated a number of different sources into her work, not the least of which was the Promethean myth from Ovid. The influence of John Milton's Paradise Lost, the book the 'monster' finds in the cabin, is also clearly evident within the novel.
Also, both the Shelley's had read William Beckford's Vathek (a Gothic novel that has been likened to an Arabesque). Can one miss the darkling reflection of the Beckford character's "insolent desire to "penetrate the secrets of heaven" in both "Alastor" ("I have made my bed In charnels and on coffins") and Mary's acclaimed piece ("Who shall perceive the horrors ...as I dabbled among the unhallowed damp of the grave, or tortured the living animal to animate the lifeless clay")?
Indeed, many, if not most, commentators take this "desire" to be a major theme of Frankenstein.
Returning to England in September of 1816, Shelley withstood the self-drowning of his wife Harriet and married Mary (now with her family's consent). Then, during the spring of the following year, Frankenstein became a finished article.
Following on from a number of Percy's literary and personal ups and downs, the Shelley troupe moved to Lerici, a town close to La Spezia in Italy. There, on July 8, 1822, in the midst of writing a shadowy work called "The Triumph Of Life", the young poet drowned, along with Edward Williams, on a boat trip back from Livorno.
Mary was tireless in promoting her late husband's work, including editing and annotating unpublished material. But she also found occasions to write a few more novels, including Valperga, The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck and Falkner.
Critics say these works do not begin to approach the power and fame of Frankenstein; The Last Man, a pioneering science fiction novel of the human apocacalypse in the distant future, is, however, sometimes considered her best work.
Mary Shelley died on February 1, 1851 in London and was interred at St. Peter's Churchyard in Bournemouth, in the English county of Dorset.
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