Mary Shelley’s most famous novel begins with an act of creation and turns it into a question of responsibility. In Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, published anonymously in 1818, Victor Frankenstein makes a living being and then recoils from it. The book became a lasting work of Gothic fiction and an early example of science fiction, but it was only one part of Shelley’s literary career. She wrote novels, short stories, travel books and biographies, and spent years editing and promoting her husband’s poetry.

A childhood shaped by books and ideas

Born Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin in Somers Town, London, on 30 August 1797, she was the daughter of the philosopher and novelist William Godwin and the philosopher and women’s rights advocate Mary Wollstonecraft. Her mother died eleven days after giving birth. Godwin raised Mary and her older half-sister, Fanny Imlay, and later married Mary Jane Clairmont, who brought two children, Charles and Claire, into the household.

Mary received little formal schooling, though she was not wholly without it: she attended a boarding school in Ramsgate for six months in 1811. Her father tutored her, took the children on educational outings and gave them access to his library and the intellectual visitors around him. In 1812, he sent her to stay with the family of William Baxter near Dundee, Scotland. She returned for a further stay the following year. In the introduction to a later edition of Frankenstein, she remembered writing outdoors there, among the trees and on the stark hillsides.

At sixteen, Mary began a relationship with the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, a follower of her father’s political ideas. Percy was already married. In July 1814, Mary and Percy eloped to France with her stepsister Claire Clairmont. Their travels took them through France and Switzerland before money forced them to return to England. Their early life together was unsettled: they faced debt, family estrangement and the death of a prematurely born daughter. They married in London in December 1816, after Percy’s first wife, Harriet, had died.

The summer that became Frankenstein

In May 1816, Mary, Percy and Claire travelled to Geneva. Lord Byron, who had been involved with Claire, joined them with his physician John William Polidori. The group spent time writing, boating and talking. During a stretch of wet weather, they read German ghost stories, and Byron proposed that each should write one of their own.

Mary initially struggled to find a subject. Discussions about the principle of life and the possibility of reanimating a corpse stayed with her. She later described a waking vision of a student beside the being he had made. What she had imagined as a short tale grew into a novel, with encouragement from Percy. She completed Frankenstein in 1817; it appeared anonymously in January 1818, with a preface by Percy and a dedication to her father, William Godwin. Readers initially assumed Percy was its author.

The novel’s central figure is Victor Frankenstein; the being he creates is not named Frankenstein. The distinction matters to the story, which follows not only the creation of life but also the creator’s abandonment of his creation. The book asks what obligations accompany knowledge and power. Its lasting reach is evident in the many theatrical and film adaptations that followed, beginning with a stage version in 1823. The history of the novel’s authorship has also drawn debate. Percy encouraged Mary’s writing and made changes to the manuscript, but the extent of his contribution has been disputed; the evidence does not justify reducing her achievement to a shared authorship claim.

Writing through loss and change

The Shelleys left England for Italy in 1818. Their time there brought intense literary work as well as repeated bereavement. Their children Clara and William died in 1818 and 1819. Mary’s fourth child, Percy Florence, was born in November 1819 and was the only one of her children to survive into adulthood. In 1822, Percy Bysshe Shelley drowned after his sailing boat was caught in a storm off the Italian coast.

Mary returned to England in 1823 with her young son and determined to earn her living by writing. Her work after Frankenstein shows a writer moving between forms and subjects. Valperga (1823) was a historical novel; The Last Man (1826) imagined a world devastated by plague. She later published The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck (1830), Lodore (1835) and Falkner (1837). Her writing often examined how individual ambition, political power and family relationships shape people’s lives. In her fiction, the experience and choices of women could challenge accounts of history and society that placed men at their centre.

She also wrote short stories for popular annuals and produced biographical essays for Dionysius Lardner’s Cabinet Cyclopaedia. Between 1832 and 1839, she wrote lives of notable Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and French writers. These works required research across several centuries and languages, and brought women’s histories and domestic life into a form often dominated by accounts of male public achievement.

Travel, editing and a literary inheritance

Travel writing was part of Shelley’s work from early in her life. She and Percy kept a journal during their 1814 travels, later publishing it with accounts of their visit to Geneva as History of a Six Weeks’ Tour (1817). Years later, she recorded journeys with her son and his friends in Rambles in Germany and Italy in 1840, 1842 and 1843 (1844). The book combines observations of places and people with reflections on memory, political life and her own experience as a widow and mother.

After Percy’s death, Shelley also took responsibility for making his work available. She edited his poetry and other writings, adding notes that helped readers understand the work and its author. This work was not uncomplicated: restrictions imposed by Percy’s father and the expectations of publishers limited what she could publish about his life. She sometimes omitted passages, including radical or atheistic material, but also worked to preserve and circulate his writing. Her editorial choices have been debated, yet her editions helped establish Percy Bysshe Shelley’s posthumous reputation.

Shelley continued to live and write in England, balancing her career with the care of her son. Her final years were marked by illness. She died in London on 1 February 1851, aged 53. Her son and daughter-in-law buried her at St Peter’s Church, Bournemouth, near their home, rather than at the St Pancras churchyard where Mary had wished to be laid beside her parents.

Why Mary Shelley deserves a place in British Legacy

Mary Shelley’s place in British literary history rests on more than the enduring image of Victor Frankenstein. The novel she wrote in her teens brought Gothic storytelling into sustained contact with questions about scientific ambition, human responsibility and the treatment of an outcast. Its continuing life in print, theatre and film has given generations of readers and audiences a shared language for thinking about creation and its consequences. That achievement is distinctly connected to Britain: Shelley was born and raised in London, wrote and published as an English author, and produced much of her work within British literary and political life, even as important parts of her story unfolded in Europe.

Her wider career gives that legacy greater depth. Shelley’s novels, stories, travel writing and biographies show a professional writer working across forms, including when her best-known work risked obscuring everything else she made. Her biographical writing brought attention to writers from several European traditions, while her fiction repeatedly examined the pressures exerted by power, family and social expectations. By editing Percy Bysshe Shelley’s work, she also shaped how another major poet would be read after his death. Remembering her in British Legacy means recognising both a landmark novel and the sustained, varied labour of the woman who wrote it.

Sources

Mary Shelley — Wikipedia revision 1376182009

Adapted in part from Mary Shelley by Wikipedia contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0. Text has been edited and combined with the existing article; this adapted text is shared under the same licence. Contributor history.