visibility Similar

code Related

French Lives Title - Public domain dedication image

description

Summary

Title page from the second volume of Lives of the Most Eminent Literary and Scientific Men of France

Mary Shelley is an English novelist whose work has reached all corners of the globe. Author of Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus (1818), Shelley was the daughter of the radical philosopher William Godwin, who described her as ‘singularly bold, somewhat imperious, and active of mind’. Her mother, who died days after her birth, was the famous defender of women’s rights, Mary Wollstonecraft. Mary grew up with five semi-related siblings in Godwin’s unconventional but intellectually electric household. At the age of 16, Mary eloped to Italy with the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, who praised ‘the irresistible wildness & sublimity of her feelings’. Each encouraged the other’s writing, and they married in 1816 after the suicide of Shelley’s wife. They had several children, of whom only one survived. A ghost-writing contest on a stormy June night in 1816 inspired Frankenstein, often called the first true work of science-fiction. Superficially a Gothic novel, influenced by the experiments of Luigi Galvani, it was concerned with the destructive nature of power when allied to wealth. Familiar to scholars, librarians and the entire literary world, the novel tells the story of Doctor Victor Frankenstein and a creature he creates in an unorthodox scientific experiment. It was an instant wonder and spawned a mythology all of its own that endures to this day. After Percy Shelley’s death in 1822, she returned to London and pursued a very successful writing career as a novelist, biographer and travel writer. She also edited and promoted her husband’s poems and other writings.

label_outline

Tags

mary shelley high resolution
date_range

Date

1838
collections

in collections

Mary Shelley (1797–1851)

English novelist, author of the gothic novel Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus, which is considered an early example of science fiction.
create

Source

Lives of the Most Eminent Literary and Scientific Men of France. Vol. 2. London : Printed for Longman, Orme, Brown, Green & Longmans ... and John Taylor, 1838.
link

Link

http://commons.wikimedia.org/
copyright

Copyright info

public domain

label_outline Explore Mary Shelley

Topics

mary shelley high resolution