Mary Shelley
(1797–1851)

Even the most serious and dedicated writers have their lighter moments. It is interesting to note that had it not been for such a moment involving two of English literature's most gifted writers, one of the most celebrated Gothic novels of all time might never have seen the light of day. More interesting still, the novel in question, Frankenstein, was penned by neither of the aforementioned greats–the poets Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron–but by the wife of the former, Mary Shelley.

Born in London, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin was the daughter of William Godwin, a political thinker and writer given to radical ideas. One of her father's books, Political Justice, managed to attract the attention of the young and equally radically minded Percy Shelley, who became one of Godwin's disciples. Mary Godwin in turn became a great admirer of the young poet, and the two of them eloped to Switzerland when she was 17.

Mary Shelley's first piece of writing, Journal of a Six' Weeks' Tour (1827), was a collaborative effort with her husband. Her solo work–the novel with which her name is most often associated today–grew, quite innocently, out of idle conversation between Byron and another friend during a visit to the Shelley's home on Lake Geneva in 1816. As a result of the conversation, it was suggested as a means of passing the time that each of the four friends attempt to write a ghost story. Though the results of the contest were largely unremarkable, Mary Shelley's horrific tale of the creation of a monster so impressed the gathering that her husband later urged her to develop it into a full-length novel. Thus was born Frankenstein (1818), and the creature that has thrilled countless readers and fueled the imaginations of generations of filmmakers.

After Frankenstein, Mary Shelley produced five more novels; Valperga (1823) and Perkin Warbeck (1830), which are historical works; the autobiographical Lodore (1835); Falkner (1837), a complicated mystery tale; and The Last Man (1826).

If Frankenstein is, as scholars have noted, structurally weak, it is nevertheless a "good read." More important from a historical perspective, the novel was the first in a long line of work to explore the potential dangers of technology that falls into wrong hands.

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