SHELLEY, Mary Wollstonecraft.

Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft, 1797-1851; Women authors; Frankenstein: Or, the Modern Prometheus (Book); Science fiction

London (England); England

This article features author Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. She was born on August 30, 1797 in Somers Town, London, England. Daughter of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, had, by the age of twenty, eloped with Percy Bysshe Shelley, journeyed in ravaged post-Napoleonic France, lost a child, given birth to two others, married her lover, and published Frankenstein. Her novel Frankenstein undoubtedly owes its universal fame to dramatic and film versions. It has been called the first science fiction novel, a Faustian-bargain story, an allegory of the French revolution and/or class war, an indictment of the bourgeois family and of the arrogance of male-oriented science. She died on February 1, 1851 in Chester Square, London, England.