orig. Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin
born Aug. 30, 1797, London, Eng.
died Feb. 1, 1851, London
English Romantic novelist.
The only daughter of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft , she met and eloped with Percy B. Shelley in 1814. They married in 1816 after his first wife committed suicide. Mary Shelley's best-known work is Frankenstein (1818), a narrative of the dreadful consequences of a scientist's artificially creating a human being. After her husband's death in 1822, she devoted herself to publicizing his writings and educating their son. Of her several other novels, the best, The Last Man (1826), is an account of the future destruction of the human race by a plague.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, detail of an oil painting by Richard Rothwell, first exhibited 1840; ...
Courtesy of The National Portrait Gallery, London