30th August: Mary Shelley

Mary Shelley, creator of Frankenstein and wife of Percy Shelley, was born on this date in 1797. Here's the low down on her:

1. Her name at birth was Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin. She was the daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft, the feminist writer and philosopher, and William Godwin, also a writer and philosopher. She had an older half sister, Fanny. Mary's mother died from childbirth complications not long after Mary was born and so she was brought up by her father. He eventually married again – another Mary, who had two children. The young Mary detested her.
2. Her education was unconventional. She was mostly educated at home by tutors and governesses, and her father. He was a publisher of educational books for children and Mary often read these in manuscript form, as well as being taken on educational outings. She attended a boarding school for just six months. To complete her education, Mary's father sent her to Scotland to stay with William Baxter and his family. Whether this was because Baxter could provide a healthier environment or because Godwin wanted Mary exposed to Baxter's brand of politics, is a matter of speculation. We do know, from Mary's own writings, that it was here that she first started writing. She says she sat under trees and on hillsides and wrote, although she dismissed this early work as “a most common-place style.”
3. William Godwin was often in debt – his business didn't make Money. The only reason he didn't end up in debtor's prison was that he had numerous friends and associates who would bail him out. One of these was Percy Shelley, although eventually, Shelley's aristocratic family restricted his access to the money because they didn't like how he was spending it and giving it away, so he had to stop bailing Godwin out, causing a rift between the two men. Hence, when Mary, 16, and Percy, 22 and already married, started seeing each other, he did not approve.
4. Tradition has it that Mary lost her virginity to Percy in a graveyard. Later, they eloped, taking Claire, Mary's stepsister with them, and travelled around Europe, reading and keeping journals, until they ran out of money and had to return to England.
5. Somewhere along the line, Mary had fallen pregnant. Her father wanted nothing to do with her, and she moved in with Percy, but it wasn't a happy time. Not only was Percy's wife pregnant at the time, but he was also almost certainly cheating on Mary with Claire. Percy even tried to set Mary up with a lover, his friend Thomas Jefferson Hogg, who Mary disliked at first, but they did become friends in the end. The couple had no money – Percy often had to go away to escape creditors. His wife gave birth to a son, but Mary's baby was premature and died. This caused her to be seriously depressed, until she had her son, William, just over a year later.
6. In 1816, the family went on holiday to Geneva, with Claire and Lord Byron with whom Claire was now having an affair, and had got pregnant. Also with them was a doctor called John William Polidori. It was a wet summer, Mary recorded in her journals. It was here that Byron proposed that they each write a ghost story. For several days, to her shame, Mary could think of nothing to write; but a conversation about the meaning of life and death and whether a corpse could be galvanised back to life provided her with much needed inspiration. That night, she came up with the idea for Frankenstein. She finished writing it at the age of 19 and published it anonymously.
7. She and Percy Shelley were finally married after Shelley's wife was found drowned after being missing for two weeks. Mary's father and stepmother attended the wedding. There is a conspiracy theory that Mary's father may have killed her.
8. Mary had four children altogether – but only one survived. She also had a miscarriage and almost died, but for her husband's quick thinking – he sat her in a bath of ice to stop the bleeding.
9. Frankenstein wasn't her only book. She wrote several more – including Valperga, The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck, The Last Man, Lodore and Falkner. She also wrote a number of short stories.
10. She died, aged 53, probably from a brain tumour. 

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