Shelley died of brain cancer on February 1, , at age 53, in London, England. She was buried at St. Peter's Church in Bournemouth, laid to rest with the cremated remains of her late husband's heart.
It was roughly a century after her passing that one of her novels, Mathilde , was finally released in the s. Her lasting legacy, however, remains the classic tale of Frankenstein. This struggle between a monster and its creator has been an enduring part of popular culture.
In , Kenneth Branagh directed and starred in a film adaptation of Shelley's novel. Her work has also inspired some spoofs, such as Young Frankenstein starring Gene Wilder. Shelley's monster lives on in such modern thrillers as I, Frankenstein as well. We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us!
Subscribe to the Biography newsletter to receive stories about the people who shaped our world and the stories that shaped their lives. Known for his lyrical and long-form verse, Percy Bysshe Shelley was a prominent English Romantic poet and was one of the most highly regarded and influential poets of the 19th century. Mary Wollstonecraft was an English writer who advocated for women's equality.
Her book 'A Vindication of the Rights of Woman' pressed for educational reforms. William Blake was a 19th-century writer and artist who is regarded as a seminal figure of the Romantic Age.
His writings have influenced countless writers and artists through the ages. Jane Austen was a Georgian era author, best known for her social commentary in novels including 'Sense and Sensibility,' 'Pride and Prejudice' and 'Emma. In July , one month before her seventeenth birthday, Mary ran away with Percy, and they spent the next few years traveling in Switzerland, Germany, and Italy.
Percy's father, Sir Timothy Shelley, cut off his son's large allowance after the couple ran away together. In Mary's half-sister Fanny committed suicide; weeks later, Percy's wife, Harriet, drowned herself. Mary and Percy were married in London in an unsuccessful attempt to gain custody of his two children by Harriet. Three of their own children died soon after birth, and Mary fell into a deep depression that did not improve even after the birth in of Percy Florence, her only surviving child.
The Shelleys' marriage suffered, too, in the wake of their children's deaths, and Percy formed romantic attachments to other women.
Despite these difficult circumstances, Mary and Percy enjoyed a large group of friends, which included the poet Lord Byron — and the writer Leigh Hunt — They also maintained a schedule of very strict study—including classical and European literature, Greek, Latin, and Italian language, music and art—and other writing.
During this period Mary completed Frankenstein, the story of a doctor who, while trying to discover the secret of life, steals bodies Mary Shelley.
Reproduced by permission of the Corbis Corporation. While most early reviewers criticized what they considered the gruesome inspiring horror elements in Frankenstein, many praised the author's imagination and powers of description. In the later nineteenth century and throughout Frankenstein criticism, critics have searched for Percy Shelley's influence on the book. Scholars have also debated the value of the additional narratives that he encouraged his wife to write. While some have praised the novel's resulting three-part structure, others have argued that these additions take away from and merely pad the story.
Many have also noted the influence of Shelley's father's social views in the book; in addition, some critics claim to have found links to his fiction. Mary Shelley's journal entries reveal that during and , when Frankenstein was being written, she and her husband discussed the work many times. Prometheus Bound. A year later, Mary Shelley returned to England and from then on devoted herself to the upbringing of her son and a career as a professional author.
The last decade of her life was dogged by illness, probably caused by the brain tumor that was to kill her at the age of Until the s, Mary Shelley was known mainly for her efforts to publish her husband's works and for her novel "Frankenstein", which remains widely read and has inspired many theatrical and film adaptations.
Recent scholarship has yielded a more comprehensive view of Mary Shelley's achievements. Scholars have shown increasing interest in her literary output, particularly in her novels, which include the historical novels "Valperga" and "Perkin Warbeck" , the apocalyptic novel "The Last Man" , and her final two novels, "Lodore" and "Falkner" Studies of her lesser-known works, such as the travel book "Rambles in Germany and Italy" and the biographical articles for Dionysius Lardner's "Cabinet Cyclopaedia" , support the growing view that Mary Shelley remained a political radical throughout her life.
Mary Shelley's works often argue that cooperation and sympathy, particularly as practiced by women in the family, were the ways to reform civil society. This view was a direct challenge to the individualistic Romantic ethos promoted by Percy Shelley and the Enlightenment political theories articulated by her father, William Godwin.
Sign In. Edit Mary Shelley. Percy, too, was more than satisfied with his new partner in these first years. He exulted that Mary was "one who can feel poetry and understand philosophy" — although she, like Harriet before her, refused his attempts to share her with his friend Thomas Hogg. Mary thus learned that Percy's loyalty to Godwin's free love ideals would always conflict with his deep desire for "true love" as expressed in so much of his poetry.
Mary and Percy shared a love of languages and literature. They enjoyed reading and discussing books together, such as the classics that Percy took to reading upon their return to London towards the end of the year. During this time Percy Shelley wrote "Alastor, or The Spirit of Solitude", in which he counsels against the loss of "sweet human love" in exchange for the activism that he himself was to promote and indulge in for much of his life.
During May of , the couple, again with Jane now Claire Clairmont, traveled to Lake Geneva to summer near the famous and scandalous poet Lord Byron, whose recent affair with Claire had left her both pregnant and somewhat obsessed with him. In terms of English literature, it was to be a productive summer.
Mary, in the meantime, was inspired to write an enduring masterpiece of her own. Forced to stay indoors on one particular evening by the climatic events of the "Year Without a Summer" , the group of young writers and intellectuals, enthralled by the ghost stories from the book Fantasmagoriana , decided to have a ghost-story writing contest. Another guest, Dr. Other guests wove tales of equal horror, but Mary found herself unable to invent one.
That night, however, she had a waking dream where she saw "the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. In time it would be published as Frankenstein.
Its success would endure long after the other writings produced that summer had faded. Mary had incorporated a number of different sources into her work, not the least of which was the Promethean myth from Ovid. Frankenstein is also full of references to her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, and her major work A Vindication of the Rights of Woman which discusses the lack of equal education for males and females.
Can one miss the darkling reflection of the Beckford character's "insolent desire" to "penetrate the secrets of heaven" in both "Alastor" "I have made my bed In charnels and on coffins" and Mary's acclaimed piece "Who shall perceive the horrors Indeed, many, if not most, commentators take this "desire" to be a major theme of Frankenstein.
Mary and Percy were both ethical vegetarians and strong advocates for animals.
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