Mary Shelley | Notable Biographies

(1797/08/30 - 1851/02/01)

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
British writer

He was born on August 30, 1797 in London.
Daughter of the philosopher William Godwin and the writer and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft. Within days of his birth his mother, who had written a Vindication of Women Rights, died of a fever leaving her husband to the care of Mary and their three-year-old sister and half Fanny Imlay. Married Godwin later with a widow who already had two daughters with which the philosopher enough a new stem.
In 1814, at the age of sixteen, Mary left their home and their country with the poet Percy Shelley, which had begun a relationship despite being married. The couple traveled to France and Switzerland. Madly in love with Percy B. Shelley from the first time he saw it, Godwin, did not no qualms to run after him. That was not the case of the wife of the poet who, humiliated, offended and become pregnant followed the happy couple to La Spezia, locality of the Italian coast that were established. To deductibles disorders of such a situation soon joining the footballer Byron, always affection for all kinds of disorders.
John Clute, in her interesting "encyclopedia of science fiction", does not hesitate to assert that a sister of Mary, also hosted in La Spezia then, frequented the bed of the lord. In any case, the community gets rid with the suicides of a second Sister Mary and Shelley's wife.
They got married in 1816, after Shelley's first wife put death by drowning. Fruit of this coexistence were multiple pregnancies and an only son, a male, only the small Percy Florence survived childhood.
Creator of the book that launched the science fiction and still stands today as one of the great tales of horror of all time; in 1818 he published the first and the most important of his works, Frankenstein or the modern Prometheusnovel. Apparently, he wrote the story of Victor Frankenstein for a bet. The night of June 16, 1816, met with Lord Byron and others in a villa on the outskirts of Geneva. Locked in the House by a storm, were read scare stories to entertain themselves. Mary then imagined to Frankenstein inspired by a nightmare that took eighteen years of age. He wrote the novel after a bet with Byron, as he tells herself in the foreword to the edition of "Frankenstein" in 1831. This work, one achievement more remarkable for an author of only 20 years, immediately became a critical and commercial success. The story of Frankenstein, student of the occult and his sub-human creature created from human corpses, have been to the theatre and cinema on several occasions.
It failed so popular with none of his subsequent works, or the excellence of this first, despite the fact that others wrote four novels, several books of travel, stories and poems. Her novel the last man (1826), considered the best of its production, tells the future destruction of the human race by a terrible plague. Lodore (1835) is a fictionalized autobiography. After the death of her husband, in 1822, Mary was dedicated to disseminate the work of the poet. Thus, he published his posthumous poems (1824) and published his Obras poéticas (1839) with valuable and detailed notes.
Mary Shelley died in London, while he slept, on February 1, 1851. His last wish was to be buried next to his parents. They rest in the cemetery of St Peter, Bournemouth.