The Last Man

Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley (1797-1851) was a writer, editor, and journalist best-known for her groundbreaking science fiction novel, Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus (1818). She was born to two intellectuals, the feminist Mary Wollstonecraft and the political theorist William Godwin. Wollstonecraft died shortly after giving birth to Mary. Godwin always encouraged the younger Mary’s literary pursuits, while Wollstonecraft’s legacy remained a great influence in Mary’s life and thought. Growing up, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was surrounded by her father’s friends, many of whom were great writers and thinkers of the time. One of these friends was the radical poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley, with whom she fell in love when she was a teenager.

Although Shelley was married, the two eloped to Europe with Wollstonecraft Shelley’s stepsister, Claire Clairmont. When the trio returned to England, they faced financial difficulties and social scandal over the adulterous elopement. Claire eventually had a brief affair with Lord Byron. Near Lake Geneva in the summer of 1816, Claire and the Shelleys visited Byron, and the group famously had a ghost story writing competition, in which Wollstonecraft Shelley developed the idea for Frankenstein. Though her earlier work was published anonymously, she eventually began to publish under the name Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, paying homage to both her mother and her husband.