Mary Shelley's Bio

Mary Shelley was born in England in 1797 and died of a brain tumor in London in 1851. Shelley has over eighteen works published with the most well known being Frankenstein also called The Modern Prometheus. Frankenstein was published before Shelley was nineteen years old. She was born the daughter of two intellectuals and her mother Mary Wollstonecraft was a published author as well. Shelley’s mother died just days after her birth. Her father dealt with his grief by writing a highly criticized memoir of his late wife. This memoir hung over the family and damaged their reputation due to the risque nature of its contents. Shelley fell in love with the friend of the family’s disciple who was already married at the time. Their relationship was forbidden so the fled together to France. She lost four of their five children together during infancy and several members of her circle commited suicide. Numerous critics have pointed out this theme of creation, birth and death in her novel Frankenstein.