155-] English Literature
Mary
Wollstonecraft Shelley (born August 30 , 1797, London, England—died February 1,
1851, London) English Romantic novelist best known as the author of
Frankenstein.
The
only daughter of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, she met the young poet
Percy Bysshe Shelley in 1812 and eloped with him to France in July 1814 . The
couple were married in 1816, after Shelley’s first wife had committed suicide .
After her husband’s death in 1822, she returned to England and devoted herself
to publicizing Shelley’s writings and to educating their only surviving child,
Percy Florence Shelley. She published her late husband’s Posthumous Poems
(1824); she also edited his Poetical Works (1839), with long and invaluable
notes, and his prose works. Her Journal is a rich source of Shelley biography,
and her letters are an indispensable adjunct.
Mary
Shelley’s best-known book is Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818,
revised 1831), a text that is part Gothic novel and part philosophical novel;
it is also often considered an early example of science fiction. It narrates
the dreadful consequences that arise after a scientist has artificially created
a human being. (The man-made monster in this novel inspired a similar creature
in numerous American horror films.) She wrote several other novels, including
Valperga (1823), The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck (1830), Lodore (1835), and
Falkner (1837); The Last Man (1826), an account of the future destruction of
the human race by a plague, is often ranked as her best work . Her travel book
History of a Six Weeks’ Tour (1817) recounts the continental tour she and
Shelley took in 1814 following their elopement and then recounts their summer
near Geneva in 1816.
Late
20th-century publications of her casual writings include The Journals of Mary
Shelley, 1814–1844 (1987), edited by Paula R. Feldman and Diana Scott-Kilvert,
and Selected Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1995), edited by Betty T.
Bennett.
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