Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Born in London on August 30, 1797, she was the daughter of two famous writers and thinkers: Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin. She grew up in an unusually literary world, and that background helped form the sharp, curious mind that would later produce Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus.

She began writing Frankenstein as a teenager and published it anonymously in 1818. The novel became her most famous work, but it was far from her only one: she also wrote novels including Valperga, The Last Man, Perkin Warbeck, Lodore, and Falkner, as well as travel writing and short fiction. After the death of her husband, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, she worked hard to preserve and edit his writings while continuing her own career.

Mary Shelley died on February 1, 1851. Today she is remembered not only as the author of a classic Gothic tale, but as a major literary figure whose work explored ambition, loss, politics, and what it means to be human.