© 2017 Rob. All rights reserved.

Mary Shelley

Mary Shelley
Ink and watercolor on 9″ x 12″ watercolor paper
The latest addition to the ‘She Changed the World’ Collection!

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797-1851) is best known as the author of the Gothic horror novel Frankenstein. Raised by her father, the political philosopher William Godwin after the passing of her mother, philosopher and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, young Mary grew up with a rich yet non-traditional education. In 1814 she began a relationship with noted poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, eventually marrying.

In 1816 the couple famously spent the summer with Lord Byron, John William Polidori and Claire Clairmont near Geneva, Switzerland. It was during this time that Mary conceived the idea for Frankenstein and began writing it, before its publication in 1818. The novel is a forebear of the science fiction genre and introduces a concept in Frankenstein’s Monster that permeates our culture today.

Mary spent her life promoting Frankenstein as well as her husband’s works, in addition to writing several other lesser-known novels. Her works have stayed in the spotlight for hundreds of years, mostly due to the power of Frankenstein but her other writings have come back into print in the past couple decades, showing her as one of the prominent voices of the Romantic period as well as a major political voice.