Exactly who was Mary Shelley, the woman? Mary Shelley was the daughter of two of the most influential authors of their times. She longed to live up to the reputation of her parents. She then eloped with and later married a man destined to become one of the greatest poets in the English romantic tradition. Although she did publish many works of fiction and nonfiction during her life that were generally well received, she was best known for the work she did as Percy's literary executor. Her greatest fame during her lifetime arose out of her scandalous relationship with Percy Shelley. And, although we know her now as the author of Frankenstein and greatly admire her and her work, following the publication of this, her most famous work, many believed …show more content…
As a child (she says, in her Introduction to the 1831 edition) she wrote stories and even more indulged in "waking dreams", the natural habit of an imaginative and lonely child "following up trains of thought, which had for their subject the formation of a succession of imaginary incidents. My dreams were at once more fantastic and agreeable than my writings." Her writings, she goes on to say, were "intended at least for one other eye -- my childhood's companion and friend; but my dreams were all my own; I accounted for them to nobody; they were my refuge when annoyed -- my dearest pleasure when free." It is a reasonable assumption that she did not tell her day-dreams to her father, or even show him what she wrote down. Frankenstein must have had something of the quality of a declaration, to the world in general, and to some persons in particular: in it, her first serious literary undertaking, Mary was possibly as eager for her father's approval as Shelley's -- the hope of both combining with her own exacting internal standards to drive her on. ("To be something great and good was the precept given me by my Father," she wrote many years later in her Journal; "Shelley reiterated it" -- and Frankenstein was the first public attempt to live up to