Mary Shelley Research Paper

The events that fabricated the early life of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley were destined to produce one of the most recognized authors of the Romantic Era. On the thirtieth of August, 1797, Shelley was born in the small village of Somers Town, England. Both of her parents were famous literary and Romantic figures: William Godwin, a writer and philosopher, and Mary Wollstonecraft, a novelist and early Feminist. Shelley was exposed to death at an early age; soon after she was born, her mother died from childbirth. Once a widower, in 1801, her father remarried to Mary Jane Clairmont. The relationship between this stepmother and her stepdaughter was frigid and quite distant, and Shelley often sought escape from her challenging life through daydreams and literature (“Mary Shelley”). In The Life and Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Shelley recalled, “’as a child, I scribbled; and my favourite pastime, during the hours given me for recreation, was to ‘write stories’” (Marshall 36). During this time, Godwin saw her intellectual potential and sent her to good schools where she

Mary and Percy – despite his being currently married – developed a romantic relationship and fled on an adventure across Europe. In 1816, during their stay in Switzerland, the couple shared a house on Lake Geneva with Lord Byron and Claire Clairmont. According to the rumors of the time, the members were abhorred as “sexual deviants, heretics and incestuous perverts” (“Mary Shelley [1797-1851”). One rainy day, the group regaled themselves by taking turns and telling ghost stories. Byron’s suggestion during this occasion that each person should write his or her own horror story was what soon gave birth to Mary Shelley’s idea for the haunting tale of Frankenstein (“Mary