Profile of the Day: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

On August 30, 1797, author Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was born. She was born in London, England to political philosopher William Godwin, and philosopher and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft. Mary married poet Percy Bysshe Shelley in 1816. Only one of their four children survived beyond infancy, a son named Percy Florence Shelley.

She is best known for her first novel, Frankenstein. It was originally published anonymously in 1818 and remains widely read, and has inspired many theatrical and film adaptations. Mary Shelley also wrote the historical novels Valperga and Perkin Warbeck, the apocalyptic novel The Last Man, and Lodore and Falkner.

Mary Shelley was taken seriously as a writer during her lifetime. However, after her death she was mostly remembered as the wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley and as the author of Frankenstein. The republication of almost all her writing in recent decades has stimulated a new recognition of its value. Scholars today consider Mary Shelley to be a major Romantic figure, significant for her literary achievement and her political voice as a woman and a liberal.

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