Page 2 - Mary Shelley
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Name Date of birth Place of birth Family
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Wri7ng This novel was wriSen almost career as a joke when, during a rainy
summer holiday at Lake Geneva in Switzerland spent together with her husband, the poet Lord Byron, and Dr. John William Polidori, Mary suggested that everyone should write a ghost story, that they would read to the others as an evening pas>me. Shelley composed a short work en>tled "The Assassins", Byron wrote the story "The burial" (which was published in 1819 under the >tle "A fragment") while Polidori created the roman>c figure of a fascina>ng and mysterious vampire, with the short novel "The vampire"; Mary wrote Frankenstein.
Died 1st february 1851.
Educa7on Wrii7ng career
Mary Shelley 30TH August 1797 London
Her father was the poli>cal philosopher William Godwin and her mother the philosopher and feminist Mary WolllstonecraC. Her mother died shortly aCer she was born and she was brought up and educated by her father. In 1814, Mary began a romance with one of her father's poli>cal followers the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley who was already married. They married in 1816 aCer the suicide of Shelley’s first wife. In 1822, her husband drowned when his sailing boat sank during a storm near Lerici.
Godwin provided Mary with a rich and informal educa>on, encouraging her to adhere to his anarchist poli>cal ideas.
Author of many novels, she became famous fo Frankenstein or the modern Prometheus, , her first book wriSen in 1818.
Frankenstein or the modern Prometheus
Frankenstein or the modern Prometheus is both a gothic novel and a philosophical novel. It narrates the dreadful consequences aCer a scien>st has ar>ficially created a human being.
The subject of the novel is clearly inspired by the very ancient myth of the man who created life (but also by Ovid's "Metamorphoses" and Milton's "Paradise Lost"), but in this the prodigy is replaced by chemistry and galvanism. The scien>st brings the creature to life using the electric power of a storm. For this reason it is considered an early example of science fic>on.
