biography

Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin was born on August 30, 1797, in London, England. She was the only daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft, the early feminist and author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, and William Godwin, the political writer and novelist. Ten days after Mary's birth, Wollstonecraft died from complications, leaving Godwin, to care for both Mary and Fanny Imlay, Wollstonecraft's daughter from an earlier relationship. When Mary was four, Godwin married his neighbor, Mary Jane Clairmont.

In 1814, Mary Godwin began a romantic relationship with one of her father’s political followers, the married Percy Bysshe Shelley. Together with Mary's stepsister, Claire Clairmont , they left for France and travelled through Europe. Upon their return to England, Mary was pregnant with Percy's child. They married in late 1816 after the suicide of Percy Shelley's first wife, Harriet.

In 1816, the couple famously spent a summer with Lord Byron, John William Polidori, and Claire Clairmont near Geneva, Switzerland, where Mary conceived the idea for her novel Frankenstein.

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

In 1822, her husband drowned when his sailing boat sank during a storm in the Bay of La Spezia. A year later, Mary Shelley returned to England and from then on devoted herself to the upbringing of her son and a career as a professional author.

From 1839 Mary began suffering headaches. A decade of declining health followed. Mary Shelley died aged 53 on 1st February 1851, from what may have been a brain tumor.