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Portrait of Mary Shelley by Richard Rothwell –

Top 10 Amazing Facts about Mary Shelley

Mary Shelley was an English novelist who wrote the Gothic novel Frankenstein or, The Modern Prometheus in 1818, which is considered an early example of science fiction and one of her best-known works. Mary’s mother died less than a fortnight after giving birth to her. She was raised by her father, who provided her with a rich if informal education, encouraging her to adhere to his own anarchist political theories.

Though Mary Shelley received little formal education, her father tutored her in a broad range of subjects. He often took the children on educational outings, and they had access to his library and to the many intellectuals who visited him, including the Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the former vice-president of the United States Aaron Burr. Mary Shelley nonetheless received an unusual and advanced education for a girl of the time. She had a governess, and a daily tutor, and read many of her father’s children’s books on Roman and Greek history in a manuscript.

In this article, we feature 10 amazing facts about Mary Shelley.

1. Mary’s mother, Wollstonecraft  was also a great writer of their times

Mary Shelley was born in Somers Town, London, in 1797. She was the second child of the feminist philosopher, educator, and writer Mary Wollstonecraft and the first child of the philosopher, novelist, and journalist William Godwin. Wollstonecraft died of puerperal fever shortly after Mary was born.

Today Wollstonecraft is regarded as one of the founding feminist philosophers, and feminists often cite both her life and her works as important influences. Mary Godwin read memoirs and her mother’s books and was brought up to cherish her mother’s memory.

2. Mary’s novel Frankenstein is known as the first true science-fiction story

Title page of first edition of Frankenstein, Volume I by Author Mary Shelley –

Frankenstein is considered an early example of science fiction and one of Mary’s best-known works. Frankenstein tells the story of Victor Frankenstein, a young scientist who creates a sapient creature in an unorthodox scientific experiment. 

Shelley started writing the story when she was 18, and the first edition was published anonymously in London on 1 January 1818, when she was 20. Her name first appeared in the second edition, which was published in Â鶹APP in 1821. Though Frankenstein is infused with elements of the Gothic novel and the Romantic movement, Brian Aldiss has argued regarding it as the first true science-fiction story. 

3. Shelley’s father was the political philosopher William Godwin

Mary’s mother died less than a fortnight after giving birth to her. She was raised by her father, William Godwin who provided her with a rich if informal education, encouraging her to adhere to his own anarchist political theories.

William Godwin was an English journalist, political philosopher and novelist. He is considered one of the first exponents of utilitarianism and the first modern proponent of anarchism.

4. Mary’s first published work was Mounseer Nongtongpaw

Frontispiece and title page from Mounseer Nongtongpaw, held at the New York Public Library by Robert Cruikshank –

Mary Shelley lived a literary life. Her father encouraged her to learn to write by composing letters, and her favourite occupation as a child was writing stories. Her first published work is often thought to have been Mounseer Nongtongpaw.

Mounseer Nongtongpaw is an 1808 poem written by the Romantic writer Mary Shelley as a child. The poem is an expansion of the entertainer Charles Dibdin’s song of the same name and was published as part of eighteenth-century philosopher William Godwin’s Juvenile Library.

5. Shelley promoted the works of her husband, philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley

In 1814, Mary began a romance with one of her father’s political followers, Percy Bysshe Shelley, who was already married. Together with her stepsister, Claire Clairmont, she and Percy left for France and travelled 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. They married in late 1816, after the suicide of Percy Shelley’s first wife, Harriet.

Percy Bysshe Shelley was one of the major English Romantic poets. A radical in his poetry as well as in his political and social views, Shelley did not achieve fame during his lifetime, but recognition of his achievements in poetry grew steadily following his death and he became an important influence on subsequent generations of poets.

6. Shelley contributed five volumes of Lives of Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and French authors to Lardner’s Cabinet Cyclopaedia

Mary Shelley by Reginald Easton –

Lardner was an Irish scientific writer who popularised science and technology and edited the 133-volume Cabinet Cyclopædia. Mary contributed five volumes of Lives of Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and French authors to Lardner’s Cabinet Cyclopaedia. 

Aimed at the self-educating middle class, this encyclopedia was written during the 19th-century literary revolution in Britain that encouraged more people to read. The  Cabinet Cyclopædia consists of biographies of important writers and thinkers of the 14th to 18th centuries. Most of them were written by the Romantic writer Mary Shelley.

7. Mary lost all her children as infants and her only surviving child was Percy Florence Shelley

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

Percy Florence Shelley was the son of the English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and his second wife, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, novelist and author of Frankenstein. He was the only child of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley to live beyond infancy. He had two elder half-siblings, by his father’s first marriage to Harriet Westbrook, and three full siblings who died in infancy.

8. Shelley declined a marriage proposal from renowned actor, John Howard Payne  

Portrait of Mary Shelley (1797-1851) by Richard Rothwell –

Mary Shelley met the American actor John Howard Payne and the American writer Washington Irving, who intrigued her. Payne fell in love with her and in 1826 asked her to marry him. She refused, saying that after being married to one genius, she could only marry another. Payne accepted the rejection and tried without success to talk his friend Irving into proposing himself.

John Howard Payne was an American actor, poet, playwright, and author who had nearly two decades of theatrical career and success in London. He is today most remembered as the creator of “Home! Sweet Home!”, a song he wrote in 1822 that became widely popular in the United States and the English-speaking world. Its popularity was revived during the American Civil War, as troops on both sides embraced it.

9. Shelley consistently practiced her mother’s feminist principles

Shelley’s mother, Wollstonecraft is regarded as one of the founding feminist philosophers, and feminists often cite both her life and her works as important influences. Shelley continued to practice her mother’s feminist principles by extending aid to women whom society disapproved of. For instance, Shelley extended financial aid to Mary Diana Dods, a single mother and illegitimate herself who appears to have been a lesbian and gave her the new identity of Walter Sholto Douglas, husband of her lover Isabel Robinson. Shelley also assisted Georgiana Paul, a woman disallowed by her husband for alleged adultery.

10. Mary Shelley employed the techniques of many different novelistic genres

Mary most vividly wrote the Godwinian novel, Walter Scott’s new historical novel, and the Gothic novel. The Godwinian novel, made popular during the 1790s with works such as Godwin’s Caleb Williams employed a Rousseauvian confessional form to explore the contradictory relations between the self and society and Frankenstein exhibits many of the same themes and literary devices as Godwin’s novel.

However, Shelley critiques the Enlightenment ideals that Godwin promotes in his works. In The Last Man, she uses the philosophical form of the Godwinian novel to demonstrate the ultimate meaninglessness of the world. While earlier Godwinian novels had shown how rational individuals could slowly improve society, The Last Man and Frankenstein demonstrate the individual’s lack of control over history.