Mary Shelley's Life

(Mary Shelley, 1825)

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
 -Shelley's publications
William Godwin
Mary Wollstonecroft
Percy Bysshe Shelley

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Mary Shelley was the only child of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecroft, born on the 30th of August, 1797 in Somers Town (near London).

As Mary Shelley's relationship with her step-mother was distant, she spent most of her childhood with her father. Getting to know some of his friends such as Charles Lamb and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, she was able to have a very intellectual upbringing. In the spring of 1814 she began an affair with the then married Percy Bysshe Shelley, who was a frequent visitor to the Godwin household at the time. By the summer of the same year Mary and Percy eloped, accompanied by Mary's step-sister Jane (who later became known as Claire) Clairmont. Travelling through Europe, they returned to England in the autumn.

Living in London with Percy, 1815 was a turbulent year for Mary. Alienated from society in general, her father refused to speak with her. Coupled with Percy's financial difficulties and the premature birth (and very soon after death) of her first daughter. When Percy finally cleared up his own problems, they moved to Windsor in August. By the time that she had given birth to a son, William, in January 1816, Claire was pregnant with George Gordon Byron's (Lord Byron) child. Mary, Percy and Claire met up with Byron and his friend (and personal physician) John Polidori by Lake Geneva in the Villa Diodati. It was here that the actions that Shelley relates in the introduction of Frankenstein took place.

In October 1816 Mary's half-sister Fanny Imlay commited suicide. Two months later, after Percy's wife Harriet died, Mary married Percy. As a result of this her father forgave her at last. Soon after Frankenstein's completion in 1817, Mary gave birth to another daughter, Clara, in September. The novel was released anonymously (and presumed to have been written by Percy) in 1818, and the Shelleys moved to Italy, where Mary quickly became depressed after the deaths of both of her children. However, the birth of Percy Florence Shelley in 1819 helped somewhat to dispell this.

After Percy Bysshe Shelley drowned in 1822 Mary was devastated and determined to make sure that people remembered. She returned to England, never to remarry, where  she edited and published various copies of his notes, publishing a lot of her own work as well. In the latter years of her life, she spends most of her time with her son and her friends. Though she continued to believe the revoltionary ideals that she inherited from her parents, she strove to conform to the society that she lived in as well, and tries as best as she can to avoid the spotlight of being related to various famous people (her parents and her husband).

At the age of 53, Mary died on the 1st of February 1851 in London.

Shelley's publications
1816 - Frankenstein, Or The Modern Prometheus (published 1818)
1819 - Mathilda (published 1959)
1821 - Valpurga (published 1823)
1824 - The Last Man (published 1826)
1830 - Perkin Warbeck
1831 - Revised edition of Frankenstein, Or The Modern Prometheus
1835 - Lodore
1837 - Falkner
181- => 184- - Collected Tales And Stories (published 1976)

William Godwin
Born on the 3rd of March, 1756, Godwin's early life passed relatively quietly. After serving as a minister, in the presence of religion for so long, his viewpoint swings 180 degrees and he becomes an atheist in 1785, and became a philosopher and author. He held many strong beliefs that contradicted society's general viewpoints. Among these were his beliefs in anarchy and cohabitation / open marriages (he believed in man's ability to reason, which should not be suppressed by another person or Goverment) and the abolishment of the class system as it was (he believed that everyone deserved enough to fit his needs as everyone has a right to a good well-being, which was very far from the case at the time). As a result of this, he was particularly supportive of the French revolution when it started in 1789.

Though all of the above led him to become famous for his unorthodox thinking and for being incredibly brave to defy society, his almost Communist views were too far to the Left for the liking of the vast amount of the population. Godwin's most famous works, The Enquiry Concerning Political Justice and Caleb Williams were published in 1793 and 1794 respecitvely.

Despite his open opposition to marriage, he weds the feminist Mary Wollstonecroft in 1797. Though Mary dies six months later after the birth of their daughter, Godwin remarried four years later to Mary Jane Clairmont, who was also a widow. When his daughter eloped with Percy Bysshe Shelley Godwin condemned her, and reconciled with her when they married, which strongly opposed his views on marriage and open relationships, making him seem like quite the hypocrite.

Up until his death in London in 1836, he continued to write, producing work for children as well as for adults, and published the work of others also.

Mary Wollstonecroft
Born in 1759 as the daughter of a wife beating father, Mary Wollstonecroft showed from an early stage that she was going to be a feminist when she repeatedly tried to stop her father's abuse of her mother, albeit without success.

After her first article in 1786, she quickly gains a reputation for her writing. She was soon after not only writing original pieces, but also worked on translations and reviews. Though her earlier works centralised on the inequalities of the class system and how workers were being greatly abused, she soon moved onto writing about the subjugation of women by a patriarchal society (most famously shown in A Vindication Of The Rights Of Women in 1792), which had never been done in any such depth before. Mary soon dedicated her life to this pursuit.

Her personal life faltered to the point of attempted suicide when Gilbert Imlay, who she had fell in love with, left her just after giving birth to their daughter, Fanny, in 1794. However, in 1793 she met up with an old friend and famous philosopher William Godwin. By early 1797 they had fell in love and married, Mary pregnant with William's child. Six months later she gave birth to another daughter, Mary, but was diagnosed as having picked up blood poisoning and died ten days after her daughter's birth.

Though in the 20th Century Mary has been recognised as a classic feminist, she was seen as being scandalous in the 19th Century after her death as William published a biography of her that contained information on her unorthodox and liberal views on sex and religion, her affairs and suicide attempts.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Born in 1792 to an aristocratic and very conservative lifestyle, Percy Bysshe Shelley was expected to follow the same paths as his parents. Though he did in his early life, while studying at Oxford University he decided to spend his life fighting the inequalities in society. Having soon after been expelled from Oxford, Percy moved to London in 1810, where he married Harriet Westbrook and became well known for his support of William Godwin's ideals.

Percy's first major publication came in 1811 in the form of The Necessity Of Atheism, followed by Queen Mab in 1813 and then Refutation Of Deism in 1814. All three of these novels dealt with how religion was essentially evil and detrimental to society. In 1814 he eloped with his mentor's daughter Mary, and was soon repelled by his family who now considered him unlawful as well as a revolutionary and an atheist.

After Harriet drowned herself in the Serpentine in Hyde Park in December 1816 Percy married Mary and they moved to Italy, though he still felt like a social outcast due to his family. Ironically, this sense of isolation mirrors one of the great themes in romanticism. Though his two children Clara and William died within a few years of moving to Italy, he still managed to write some of his best work, including Prometheus Unbound in 1820, just after the release of Frankenstein, and The Cenci.

In the last few years of his life Shelley became happy again due to the birth of Percy Florence Shelley and a number of his friends, who came to spend a lot of time with him. Unfortunately, on July 8th 1822, while on a boating trip in the Gulf of Spezia with a friend, Percy was caught in a storm, and they both drowned.


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