“I think that I can maintain myself, and there is something inspiriting in the idea.”
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Mary Shelley
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was an English novelist who wrote the Gothic novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818), which is considered an early example of science fiction. She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley. Her father was the political philosopher William Godwin and her mother was the philosopher and women's ri…
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culture · English writer (1797–1851) · writer · travel writer · novelist · essayist · playwright · biographer · science fiction writer · poet · short story writer · translator · also Mary Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Mary Godwin, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, Shelley
Born 30 August 1797 · Died 1 February 1851 · Q47152
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2026· 12 entries
“s combination of libertarian radicalism and stern insistence on social decorum. Mellor largely agreed, arguing that”
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“I do not make a boast-I do not say aloud-behold my generosity and greatness of mind-for in truth it is simple justice I perform-and so I am still reviled for being worldly”
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“I am anxious that she should be brought up ... like a philosopher, even like a cynic.”
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“s debts. Godwin was angry and felt betrayed. Mary and Percy began meeting each other secretly at her mother Mary Wollstonecraft”
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Collater.al Magazine: WHAT IF – Interview with Mary Shelley
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newsbreak.com: After Frankenstein author Mary Shelley died, her family discovered an unsettling object inside her box-desk: her husband's heart.
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Cuerpomente: Mary Shelley, escritora, sobre encontrar un propósito de vida: “Nada contribuye tanto a ser feliz y a tranquilizar la mente como un propósito firme”
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Hechos de Hoy: Frankenstein, la lectura de Del Toro del clásico de Mary Shelley
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culturayespectaculos.com: Encuentro literario Tomando un café con Mary Shelley en Estación Victoria de Tandil
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Reconquista Radios: Mary Shelley, escritora inglesa: "Nada contribuye tanto a tranquilizar la mente como un propósito firme"
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Public attention spiked: 8,886 Wikipedia readers in one day, 3.5× the usual 2,573, with 0 article edits.
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2025· 1 entry
The Guardian: Frankenstein inspired by suicide of Mary Shelley’s half-sister, book reveals
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2022· 1 entry
The Guardian: From Romantics to 21st century radicals: Coleridge, Shelley and the roots of communal living
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2004· 1 entry
Awarded Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame (2004).
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2002· 1 entry
Their significance within her body of work was not appreciated
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1989· 1 entry
That a full-length scholarly biography was published
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1984· 2 entries
In 1984, Mary Poovey influentially identified the retreat of Mary Shelley's reformist politics into the "separate sphere" of the domestic.
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Mary Poovey influentially identified the retreat of Mary Shelley's reformist politics into the "separate sphere" of the domestic
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1945· 1 entry
Editor Frederick Jones wrote, "a collection of the present size could not be justified by the general quality of the letters or by Mary Shelley's importance as a writer
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1851· 4 entries
Died 1851-02-01.
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“Aby zbadać, skąd bierze się życie, należy bowiem pierwej zająć się śmiercią.”
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“Jestem sama – całkiem sama – na świecie, nieszczęścia jak plaga przetoczyły się nade mną i wyczerpały mnie; wiem, że wkrótce umrę, i jestem szczęśliwa – radosna – czuję mój puls, który bije szybko, kładę wychudłą dłoń na piersi, która płonie: mam w sobie drobnego, porywczego ducha, który właśnie iskrzy po raz ostatni.”
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“Z urodzenia jestem Genewczykiem, wywodzę się z jednej z najznamienitszych rodzin w tej republice.”
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1848· 1 entry
Percy Florence married Jane Gibson St John
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1845· 2 entries
An Italian political exile called Gatteschi, whom she had met in Paris, threatened to publish letters she had sent him
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Percy Bysshe Shelley's cousin Thomas Medwin approached her, claiming to have written a damaging biography of Percy Shelley
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1844· 2 entries
Was Rambles in Germany and Italy in 1840, 1842 and 1843, which recorded her travels with her son Percy Florence and his university friends
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Sir Timothy Shelley finally died at the age of ninety, "falling from the stalk like an overblown flower", as Mary put it
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1840· 1 entry
And 1842, mother and son travelled together on the continent, journeys that Mary Shelley recorded in Rambles in Germany and Italy in 1840, 1842 and 1843 (1844)
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1839· 1 entry
While she was working on the Lives, she prepared a new edition of his poetry, which became, in the words of literary scholar Susan J
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1836· 1 entry
At the age of eighty, she began assembling his letters and a memoir for publication, as he had requested in his will; but after two years of work, she abandoned the project
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1831· 1 entry
"and incessant rain often confined us for days to the house"
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1830· 2 entries
And at the prospect of the Reform Act 1832 (2 & 3 Will
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Sold the copyright for a new edition of Frankenstein for £60 to Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley for their new Standard Novels series
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1828· 2 entries
Met and flirted with the French writer Prosper Mérimée, but her one surviving letter to him appears to be a deflection of his declaration of love
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Fell ill with smallpox while visiting them in Paris; weeks later she recovered, unscarred but without her youthful beauty
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1827· 1 entry
Mary Shelley was party to a scheme that enabled her friend Isabel Robinson and Isabel's lover, Mary Diana Dods, who wrote under the name David Lyndsay, to embark on a life together in France as husband and wife
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1826· 2 entries
Percy Florence became the legal heir of the Shelley estate after the death of his half-brother Charles Shelley, his father's son by Harriet Shelley
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“The distress of the inhabitants, whose houses had been burned, their cattle killed and all their wealth destroyed, has given a sting to my detestation of war...”
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1824· 1 entry
With the publication of his Posthumous Poems
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1823· 3 entries
Wrote articles for Leigh Hunt's periodical The Liberal and played an active role in the formulation of its outlook
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“s periodical The Liberal and played an active role in the formulation of its outlook. She was delighted when the Whigs came back to power in 1830 and at the prospect of the Reform Act 1832 (2 & 3 Will. 4. c. 45). Critics have until recently cited Lodore and Falkner as evidence of increasing conservatism in Mary Shelley”
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To the cinematic adaptations of the 20th century, including the first cinematic version in 1910 and now-famous versions such as James Whale's 1931 Frankenstein, the seven films in the Hammer Horror series beginning with
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1822· 2 entries
“I shall write his life—& thus occupy myself in the only manner from which I can derive consolation.”
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Her husband drowned when his sailing boat sank during a storm near Viareggio
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1820· 2 entries
Found themselves plagued by accusations and threats from Paolo and Elise Foggi, former servants whom Percy Shelley had dismissed in Naples shortly after the Foggis had married
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Was thrilled by the Liberal uprising in Spain which forced the king to grant a constitution
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1818· 1 entry
For Italy, where their second and third children died before Shelley gave birth to her last and only surviving child, Percy Florence Shelley
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1817· 1 entry
Under the title History of a Six Weeks' Tour, adding four letters, two by each of them, based on their visit to Geneva in 1816, along with Percy Shelley's poem "Mont Blanc"
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1816· 1 entry
The couple and Mary's stepsister famously spent a summer with Lord Byron and John William Polidori near Geneva, Switzerland, where Shelley conceived the idea for her novel Frankenstein
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1814· 2 entries
Mary began a romance with one of her father's political followers, Percy Bysshe Shelley, who was already married
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And none of her surviving manuscripts can be definitively dated before that year
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1811· 1 entry
Also attended a boarding school in Ramsgate
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1797· 1 entry
Born 1797-08-30.
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