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Mary Shelley (1797–1851)

Author of Frankenstein

436+ Works 59,778 Members 1,035 Reviews 83 Favorited
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About the Author

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was born in England on August 30, 1797. Her parents were two celebrated liberal thinkers, William Godwin, a social philosopher, and Mary Wollstonecraft, a women's rights advocate. Eleven days after Mary's birth, her mother died of puerperal fever. Four motherless years show more later, Godwin married Mary Jane Clairmont, bringing her and her two children into the same household with Mary and her half-sister, Fanny. Mary's idolization of her father, his detached and rational treatment of their bond, and her step-mother's preference for her own children created a tense and awkward home. Mary's education and free-thinking were encouraged, so it should not surprise us today that at the age of sixteen she ran off with the brilliant, nineteen-year old and unhappily married Percy Bysshe Shelley. Shelley became her ideal, but their life together was a difficult one. Traumas plagued them: Shelley's wife and Mary's half-sister both committed suicide; Mary and Shelley wed shortly after he was widowed but social disapproval forced them from England; three of their children died in infancy or childhood; and while Shelley was an aristocrat and a genius, he was also moody and had little money. Mary conceived of her magnum opus, Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus, when she was only nineteen when Lord Byron suggested they tell ghost stories at a house party. The resulting book took over two years to write and can be seen as the brilliant creation of a powerful but tormented mind. The story of Frankenstein has endured nearly two centuries and countless variations because of its timeless exploration of the tension between our quest for knowledge and our thirst for good. Shelley drowned when Mary was only 24, leaving her with an infant and debts. She died from a brain tumor on February 1, 1851 at the age of 54. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Disambiguation Notice:

(ita) Please don't combine Shelley with Mary Shelley. Yes, some people will have entered books this way, but it more commonly refers to her husband the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, with whom "Shelley" should also not be combined.

Please don't combine Shelley with Mary Shelley. There is more than one author with that surname.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797-1851) was the author of "Frankenstein". Her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) was the author of "A vindication of the rights of woman" and has a separate author page.

Series

Works by Mary Shelley

Frankenstein (1818) 42,393 copies
The Last Man (1826) 1,656 copies
Dracula / Frankenstein (1973) — Contributor — 472 copies
Mathilda (1819) 319 copies
Mary and Maria and Matilda (1992) 211 copies
Gris Grimly's Frankenstein (1700) 207 copies
The Annotated Frankenstein (1818) 127 copies
The Essential Frankenstein (1993) 122 copies
Classic Horror Stories (2003) 118 copies
The Original Frankenstein (1818) 97 copies
The Mary Shelley Reader (1990) 95 copies
100 Eternal Masterpieces of Literature - volume 2 (2020) — Contributor — 71 copies
100 Eternal Masterpieces of Literature - volume 1 (2017) — Contributor — 57 copies
Proserpine and Midas (1922) 33 copies
The Pilgrims (2008) 20 copies
Manga Classics Frankenstein (2020) 17 copies
Frankenstein {video} (2005) 16 copies
The Monster Collection (2017) 16 copies
Falkner (1996) 16 copies
Cuentos góticos (2006) 15 copies
Tales of a Monster Hunter (1977) 15 copies
Frankenstein (Acting Edition) (1974) — Novel — 14 copies
Frankenstein [adapted - Saddleback Classics] (1999) — Original Author — 11 copies
Word Cloud Box Set: Brown (2015) 9 copies
The Dream (1831) 7 copies
The Heir of Mondolfo (2004) 7 copies
Kärleksprövningen (2017) 7 copies
Fantasmagoriana {Byron, et al.} (1998) — Contributor — 6 copies
Frankenstein [2015 Film] (2015) — Novel by — 5 copies
Frankenstein (abridged) (1976) 5 copies
La noche de los monstruos (2012) 5 copies
De grote horror omnibus (1983) 5 copies
Frankenstein resuturado (2018) 5 copies
On Ghosts (2013) 4 copies
MARY SHELLEY (2014) 4 copies
Frankenstein (1818) — Author — 3 copies
Victor Frankenstein (2001) 3 copies
MARY SHELLEY'S JOURNAL. (1947) 3 copies
The Last Man Volume III (2018) 3 copies
The Classic Gothic Horror Collection (2021) — Contributor — 3 copies
FRANKENSTEIN GALVANISED (2012) 3 copies
Amar y revivir (2020) 3 copies
The Last Man Volume I (2010) 3 copies
Harrap's Frankenstein (2016) 2 copies
Frankenstein & CD (2011) 2 copies
Tales and stories (2018) 2 copies
Frankenstein (2007) 2 copies
Frankenstein II 2 copies
Frankenstein I 2 copies
Béatrice Cenci (2000) 2 copies
On Ghosts 2 copies
The Last Man Volume 2 (2016) 2 copies
Frankenstein Illustrated (2021) 2 copies
Frankenstein (2003) 2 copies
FRANKENSTEIN -LB- NVO (2014) 2 copies
Karanlık Yazılar (2020) 2 copies
El mortal inmortal (2012) 2 copies
Prosèrpina (2019) 2 copies
The last man. Vol 2 (2019) 1 copy
The Parvenue 1 copy
2008 1 copy
(all) 1 copy
Classic Radio Sci-Fi (2014) 1 copy
Mathilda 1 copy
The Mourner (1830) 1 copy
Racconti scelti (2002) 1 copy
El elegido (2022) 1 copy
Frankenstein (1998) 1 copy
First Flight 1 copy
FRANKENSTEIN Gradifco (2015) 1 copy
The False Rhyme (1830) 1 copy
Frankenstein 2 CDs (2006) 1 copy

Associated Works

Young Frankenstein [1974 film] (1974) — Original book — 763 copies
The Book of Fantasy (1940) — Contributor — 602 copies
The Assassin's Cloak: An Anthology of the World's Greatest Diarists (2000) — Contributor, some editions — 550 copies
Penny Dreadfuls: Sensational Tales of Terror (1818) — Contributor — 458 copies
Frankenstein (Great Illustrated Classics) (1818) — Original Author — 444 copies
Frankenstein: Junji Ito Story Collection (2013) — Creator — 436 copies
The Vampyre and Other Tales of the Macabre (1997) — Contributor, some editions — 419 copies
Complete Poems of Keats and Shelley (1817) — Contributor, some editions — 322 copies
Frankenstein (Classic Starts Series) (2006) — Story — 255 copies
Frankenstein: The Graphic Novel (2005) — Story — 179 copies
The Phantom of the Opera and Other Gothic Tales (2018) — Contributor — 178 copies
Frankenstein (A Stepping Stone Book) (1982) — Story — 173 copies
Erotica: Women's Writing from Sappho to Margaret Atwood (1990) — Contributor — 168 copies
The Big Book of Classic Fantasy (2019) — Contributor — 166 copies
The Road to Science Fiction #1: From Gilgamesh to Wells (1977) — Contributor — 151 copies
Chilling Horror Short Stories (2016) — Contributor — 136 copies
Frankenstein [1931 film] (1931) — Original book — 130 copies
Dystopia Utopia: Short Stories (2016) — Contributor — 128 copies
Frankenstein (Treasury of Illustrated Classics) (2004) — Story — 121 copies
The Lifted Veil: Women's 19th Century Stories (2005) — Contributor — 114 copies
The Frankenstein Omnibus (1994) — Contributor — 102 copies
Seven Masterpieces of Gothic Horror (1963) — Contributor — 102 copies
The Mammoth Book of Frankenstein (1994) — Contributor — 98 copies
Treasury Of Gothic & Supernatural (1981) — Contributor — 96 copies
The Norton Book of Friendship (1991) — Contributor — 95 copies
The Bride of Frankenstein [1935 film] (1935) — Original book — 90 copies
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (Graphic Revolve) (2007) — Original Author — 81 copies
Frankenstein (1996) — Original Story — 78 copies
The Vampyre and Other Macabre Tales (2012) — Contributor — 74 copies
Swords & Steam Short Stories (Gothic Fantasy) (2016) — Contributor — 61 copies
The Mammoth Book of Body Horror (Mammoth Books) (2012) — Contributor — 47 copies
Masters of Horror (1968) — Contributor — 46 copies
Promethean Horrors: Classic Stories of Mad Science (2019) — Contributor — 46 copies
Frankenstein: A Pop-Up Book (2010) — Author — 44 copies
The nightmare reader, volume one (1973) — Contributor — 43 copies
Beyond the Curtain of Dark (1972) — Contributor — 37 copies
The Oxford Book of English Love Stories (1996) — Contributor — 35 copies
Visions of Tomorrow: An Interstellar Collection (1976) — Contributor — 33 copies
Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction (2011) — Contributor — 30 copies
Flesh for Frankenstein [1973 film] (1998) — Original story — 30 copies
The Monster-Maker and Other Science Fiction Classics (2012) — Contributor — 29 copies
Heavy Weather: Tempestuous Tales of Stranger Climes (2021) — Contributor — 29 copies
Twelve Gothic Tales (Oxford Twelves) (1998) — Contributor — 29 copies
Classics Illustrated: Frankenstein (1818) — Story — 27 copies
The World's Greatest Books Volume 08 Fiction (1910) — Contributor — 24 copies
Frankenstein: The True Story [1973 TV movie] (2006) — Original book — 23 copies
The Monster of Frankenstein (2015) — Contributor — 22 copies
Chills and Thrills: Tales of Terror and Enchantment (2001) — Contributor — 22 copies
Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed [1969 film] (1969) — Original story — 21 copies
Cuentos de amor victorianos (2004) — Contributor — 21 copies
The Broadview Anthology of Victorian Short Stories (2004) — Contributor — 20 copies
Great English Short Stories (1930) — Contributor — 20 copies
Frankenstein {abridged & adapted} (1978) — Original story — 19 copies
Horror by Lamplight (1993) — Contributor — 18 copies
A Century of Thrillers from Poe to Arlen (First Series) (1934) — Contributor — 18 copies
Masters of British Literature, Volume B (2007) — Contributor — 16 copies
Classic Science Fiction Stories (2022) — Contributor — 16 copies
Frankenstein: A Classic Pop-Up Tale (2009) — Author — 16 copies
Science fiction through the ages 1 (1966) — Contributor, some editions — 14 copies
The Second Book of Unknown Tales of Horror (1826) — Contributor — 14 copies
Witches' Brew: Horror and Supernatural Stories by Women (1984) — Contributor — 10 copies
Edwina Noone's Gothic Sampler (1966) — Contributor — 10 copies
Frankenstein Alive, Alive! #1 (2012) — Contributor — 10 copies
Classic Horror Omnibus: Vol.1 (1979) — Author — 9 copies
Enter at Your Own Risk: The End Is the Beginning (2014) — Contributor — 8 copies
Enter at Your Own Risk: Dreamscapes into Darkness (1605) — Contributor — 7 copies
The Frankenstein Monster [1973] #1 — Contributor — 6 copies
Suspense: A Treasury for Young Adults (1966) — Contributor — 6 copies
Frankenstein Alive, Alive! #2 (2012) — Contributor — 6 copies
The Frankenstein Monster [1973] #4 — Contributor — 5 copies
Disney Frankenstein, starring Donald Duck (2019) — Contributor — 4 copies
Classic Pop-Ups: Frankenstein (2023) — Story — 4 copies
Frankenstein Alive, Alive! #3 (2014) — Contributor — 4 copies
Strange Signposts (Anthology 15-in-1) (1966) — Contributor — 3 copies
Faseskift. Science Fiction noveller (1984) — Author, some editions — 3 copies
Witchcraft II: The Temptress [1989 Film] (1989) — Actor — 3 copies
The nightmare reader (1973) — Contributor — 2 copies
Weird Tales Volume 20 Number 6, December 1932 — Contributor — 2 copies
Weird Tales Volume 20 Number 5, November 1932 — Contributor — 2 copies
Weird Tales Volume 20 Number 4, October 1932 — Contributor — 2 copies
The Frankenstein Monster [1973] #2 — Contributor — 2 copies
The Frankenstein Monster [1973] #3 — Contributor — 2 copies
The Queen’s Story Book — Contributor — 2 copies
Witchcraft [1988 Film] (1988) — Actor — 2 copies
The King's Story Book — Contributor — 1 copy
The princess's story book — Contributor — 1 copy

Tagged

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Common Knowledge

Legal name
Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin
Other names
Godwin, Mary Wollstonecraft (birth name)
Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft
Birthdate
1797-08-30
Date of death
1851-02-01
Burial location
St. Peter's Churchyard, Bournemouth, Hampshire, England, UK
Gender
female
Nationality
UK
Country (for map)
England, UK
Birthplace
Somers Town, London, England, UK
Place of death
London, England, UK
Cause of death
brain tumour
Places of residence
London, England, UK
Villa Diodati, Lake Geneva, Switzerland
Harrow, Middlesex, England, UK
Florence, Italy
Pisa, Italy
Education
at home
Occupations
novelist
poet
editor
short story writer
essayist
Relationships
Shelley, Percy Bysshe (husband)
Godwin, William (father)
Wollstonecraft, Mary (mother)
Clairmont, Claire (stepsister)
Awards and honors
SF Hall Of Fame (Posthumous Inductee, 2004)
Short biography
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was born in London, the daughter of two major English intellectuals and writers, Mary Wollstonecraft and her husband William Godwin. She fell in love with Percy Bysshe Shelley, a married man and father, and scandalized society by eloping with him in 1814. Two years later, they were married and in 1818, she published her most famous work, her first novel: Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus. She also wrote several other novels, including Valperga (1823) and The Last Man (1826), as well as numerous novellas, short stories, poems, plays, essays, and articles for periodicals of the day, travel books, and a biography of her husband. At the time of Shelley's death in 1822, she was regarded as a major novelist married to a minor poet, but she spent 30 years promoting his work to help him achieve lasting fame.
Disambiguation notice
Please don't combine Shelley with Mary Shelley. There is more than one author with that surname.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797-1851) was the author of "Frankenstein". Her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) was the author of "A vindication of the rights of woman" and has a separate author page.

Members

Discussions

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein in Gothic Literature (October 2023)
Folio Archives 345: The Last Man by Mary Shelley 2012 in Folio Society Devotees (October 2023)
Folio Archives 310: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley 2004 in Folio Society Devotees (February 2023)
Frankenstein LE 2022 in Folio Society Devotees (December 2022)
OT: Question about the 1823 edition of Frankenstein in Folio Society Devotees (September 2022)
Frankenstein Bicentennial group read in 2018 Category Challenge (January 2018)

Reviews

Heartbreaking and sublime and terrific! I forgot just how good this story is, and I think everyone should read it at least once in their life.
 
Flagged
deborahee | 25 other reviews | Feb 23, 2024 |
A classic that I finally got around to reading/listening to, although I probably saw the movie a bunch of times -- along with all the Frankenstein-inspired movies (okay, I admit it: Young Frankenstein is my favorite comedy of all times - lol). I decided to read this because I have the new book by Don Zancanella called A Storm in the Stars, which is historical fiction about the summer Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, and I figured there might be references that I would understand better if I read the underlying work. I read along and listened to the Audible version that was released earlier this year. The readers were terrific. I particularly got into it when it was stormy outside, and I was all cozy in my reading chair with a cup of tea. I struggled a bit at the beginning getting pulled into the story, but I think that is more a function of the more formal patterns of speech attributed to the characters, which is probably very accurate for the time period (it was published first in 1818, and then revised in 1831). Once I was immersed, it was terrific.

I already knew that Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, an eighteenth-century feminist who penned The Vindication of the Rights of Women and died shortly after giving birth to her daughter), Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, and John Polidori were sitting around the fire by Lake Geneva on a night much like I was reading last night, rainy, and made a bet with each other who could write a scarier ghost story than the “penny dreadful” writers of the day. Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus was Mary's ghost story.
… (more)
 
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bschweiger | 705 other reviews | Feb 4, 2024 |
Need to reread since I haven't read this since high school.
 
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Fortunesdearest | 67 other reviews | Feb 1, 2024 |
 
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Correaf | 705 other reviews | Jan 16, 2024 |

Lists

Uni (1)
Europe (1)
1820s (1)
Daria (1)
Power (1)
1810s (1)
AP Lit (1)
100 (1)

Awards

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Associated Authors

Percy Bysshe Shelley Contributor, Collaborator
Bernie Wrightson Illustrator
Bram Stoker Contributor
Edgar Allan Poe Contributor
Stendhal Contributor
Victor Hugo Contributor
Herman Melville Contributor
Jack London Contributor
Nikolai Gogol Contributor
Leo Tolstoy Contributor
George Sand Contributor
D. H. Lawrence Contributor
Marcel Proust Contributor
Joseph Conrad Contributor
Elizabeth Gaskell Contributor
Washington Irving Contributor
Henry James Contributor
Deborah Tempest Retold by
Maxim Gorky Contributor
H. Rider Haggard Contributor
George Gissing Contributor
Grant Allen Contributor
James Joyce Contributor
Arthur Morrison Contributor
Susan Coolidge Contributor
Benjamin Disraeli Contributor
Vatsyayana Contributor
Rudyard Kipling Contributor
John Cleland Contributor
Walter Scott Contributor
Lucius Apuleius Contributor
Pieter Harting Contributor
G.K. Chesterton Contributor
Upton Sinclair Contributor
Dale Carnegie Contributor
Wilkie Collins Contributor
Jr. Horatio Alger Contributor
Daniel Defoe Contributor
Hollis Godfrey Contributor
Thomas Mann Contributor
Marcus Aurelius Contributor
O. Henry Contributor
Margaret Cavendish Contributor
Rebecca West Contributor
L. Frank Baum Contributor
Fyodor Dostoyevsky Contributor
Thomas Dekker Contributor
Emily Brontë Contributor
Anne Brontë Contributor
Henri Barbusse Contributor
Honoré de Balzac Contributor
Honore de Balzac Contributor
Gustave Flaubert Contributor
John Webster Contributor
Sir Walter Scott Contributor
E. M. Forster Contributor
Sun Tzu Contributor
Theodore Dreiser Contributor
Charlotte Brontë Contributor
Dante Alighieri Contributor
Louisa May Alcott Contributor
Blaise Pascal Contributor
George Eliot Contributor
Arthur Machen Contributor
Oscar Wilde Contributor
Homer Contributor
Theodor Fontane Contributor
Lewis Carroll Contributor
Henry Fielding Contributor
Alphonse Daudet Contributor
Aldous Huxley Contributor
Virginia Woolf Contributor
Miracle Studios Illustrator
E. F. Benson Contributor
Sheridan Le Fanu Contributor
Ralph Adams Cram Contributor
Dick Donovan Contributor
William Mudford Contributor
Ambrose Bierce Contributor
Charles E. Robinson Introduction
Elizabeth Bear Contributor
Ed Finn Editor
Kate MacCord Contributor
Alfred Nordmann Contributor
Cory Doctorow Contributor
Jane Maienschein Contributor
Anne K. Mellor Contributor
Josephine Johnston Contributor
Heather E. Douglas Contributor
Barry Jones Illustrator
Gary Reed Adapted by
Frazer Irving Illustrator
Friedrich Laun Contributor
Johann August Apel Contributor
Fiona Sampson Foreword
Lord Byron Contributor
John Polidori Contributor
Paddy Lyons Introduction
Philip Gooden Critical apparatus
Max Simon Nordau Contributor
Charles Darwin Contributor
Robert Hill Activities by
Maud Jackson Adapted by
風間 賢二 Editor, Translator, Afterword
Henry H. Harper Introduction
Sabine Werner Adapted by
John Green Illustrator
Masami Fukushima Translator
中西 秀男 Translator
Norio Itō Translator
片岡 しのぶ Translator
井上 一夫 Translator
田中 誠 Translator
杉浦 銀策 Translator
安野 玲 Translator
臼田 昭 Translator
池澤 夏樹 Translator
Barry Moser Illustrator
Paul Couturiau Translator
Philippe Munch Illustrator
Diane Johnson Introduction
Dennis Wheatley Introduction
Jeffery Deaver Introduction
Phoebe Judge Narrator
Harold Bloom Afterword
Lynd Ward Illustrator
Miranda Seymour Introduction
Maurice Hindle Introduction
Cori Samuel Narrator
Dan Stevens Narrator
Michael Hagemann Cover designer
Hermann Ebeling Afterword
Maria Paola Saci Introduction
Quim Monzó Translator
Wendy Steiner Introduction
Aristedes Ruiz Cover artist
Marc Porée Commentaires
Paavo Lehtonen Translator
Simon Vance Narrator
Gabrielle Bordwin Cover designer
Tom Casaletto Narrator
David Pinching Afterword
Karen Karbiener Introduction
Harry Brockway Illustrator
Stephen King Introduction
Brian Aldiss Introduction
Robert Matias Cover designer
Irina Philippi Translator
Nathan Clair Cover artist
Stephen Fabian Cover artist
Marge Piercy Introduction
Robert Mathias Cover designer
Judith Tarr Introduction
Ralph Tegtmeier Translator
Sarah Hall Introduction
Pamela Bickley Introduction
Johann Peterka Illustrator
Frank Frazetta Cover artist
Janet Todd Editor
Christopher Bing Illustrator
Claire Tomalin Introduction
John Grant Editor
Ron Tiner Illustrator
Harvey Parker Illustrator
Anthony Marks Introduction
BJ Harrison Narrator
Thea Kliros Illustrator
Tithi Luadthong Cover artist
Gianni De Conno Illustrator
Marc Poree Commentaires
田島 照久 Cover artist

Statistics

Works
436
Also by
114
Members
59,778
Popularity
#241
Rating
3.8
Reviews
1,035
ISBNs
2,334
Languages
38
Favorited
83

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