The Untold Legacy of Mary Shelley

Feminist icons and monsters

October is the month I read Frankenstein, and it is as much part of my reading schedule as A Christmas Carol. Frankenstein was published when Mary Shelley was nineteen years old, and many believe this is where her career ended.

The truth is that Shelley had many novels published in her lifetime and reached great literary success. She also came from a famous family, with both parents being activists.

Shelley was born in 1797 to two radical writers, so it was no surprise she became a writer herself. Her mother passed just after she was born, leaving her father to raise her. Although intellectually stimulated, she was not emotionally.

The lack of emotional attachment would shape her life and lead to her writing Frankenstein.

Famous Mother

Mary's mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, was born in London in 1759. She was as famous as her daughter for writing and a passionate advocate of educational and social equality for women.

Her hugely successful book, A Vindication of the Rights of Women, was considered a classic of feminism.

In 1792, Wollstonecraft left England for France, where she observed the French Revolution in Paris. Whilst there, she lived with an American, Captain Imlay, where she gave birth to a daughter, Fanny. The relationship lasted a year. Distraught over the end of it, she attempted to commit suicide.

Back in the UK, she met William Godwin, and on 29 March 1797, she became pregnant, and the couple married. The marriage, although brief, was a happy one. Eleven days after Mary was born, Wollstonecraft died.

Mary remained with her father, who remarried years later. The relationship between stepmother and daughter was strained.

Unusual Relationships

It was during an extended stay at friends that Percy Bysshe Shelley became interested in William Godwin. He was interested in the political views of the older man and went to visit him.

Shelley met Percy through her father. He had been corresponding with him on his ideas, visiting the family home with his wife.

When Mary returned she met the nineteen year old and instantly fell in love. Percy, at the time, was married to Harriet Westwood. The couple could not avoid their attraction, so they eloped to Europe. Godwin disowned his daughter but still sought financial help from Percy.

Mary travelled around Europe with Percy and her step-sister Claire Clairmont. Percy had always been friends with Lord Byron; Claire had also previously started a relationship with the poet. When they discovered Byron was staying in Geneva, they joined him in 1814.

Frankenstein (1818)

It was during the trip to Lake Geneva that Mary first wrote Frankenstein. Polidori joined the four and would spend many evenings reading poetry, arguing and smoking opium. Against a backdrop of thunder and lightning due to the intense weather, the conversation soon turned to more ghostly conversations.

One evening, Percy and Byron started an interesting conversation about whether human corpses could be galvanised and reanimated after death. Mary sat intrigued by the talk, adding little but listening intently.

The next evening, as they sat in the candlelit room, Byron challenged the group to write a better ghost story than they had shared.

Mary took to her room and started to write, later known as Mary Shelley. She would publish Frankenstein, and everyone would get their answer about whether corpses could come back to life.

A Love Lost

Her book History of a Six-Week's Tour recounts the continental tour she and Percy took during their elopement and stay in Lake Geneva.

Mary remained Percy's mistress for two years until his wife committed suicide in 1816, which left them free to marry. Mary then suffered the loss of two of her children on consecutive summers in 1818.

At the age of twenty-nine, Percy died in a boating accident during a freak storm. Mary returned to England and devoted her life to publicising Percy's work and supporting herself as an author. Her surviving child, Percy Florence Shelley, was the only family she had.

Other works.

However, you would think that Frankenstein was the only book she published as none of her others have received the same accolades. She, in truth, has a vast oeuvre of writing. She wrote journals, short stories, and historical essays. These are some of her more popular works.

Maurice, or the Fisher's Cot (1820)

Mary had a softer side to her personality and a great fondness for children. The tale follows a lonely orphan child, the former protégé of a fisherman, forming a bond with an equally lonely traveller and exploring the theme of parent-child relationships and reassembling severed families. It is considered one of Shelley’s most tender pieces of prose and, in retrospect, one of her most tragic, as she was writing when her relationship with her father, William Godwin, was virtually non-existent.

Valperga (1823)

Mary wrote across many genres, which is shown in this history book. This novel is how she deals with her hatred of the city-state warmongers. She weaves a fascinating story from her research.

The Last Man (1826)

This book is the next on my list to read. The dystopian novel deals with the unbearable loneliness of being one of the only survivors after an epidemic hits. Post-COVID, this has started to gain more popularity.

It is clear to see where the inspiration came from as it was written at a time when the bubonic plague was ravaging Europe. A group of humans spared from the disease band together. Mary uses this novel as an opportunity to comment on political ideas and the naivety of scientific progress. It deals with personal issues such as attachment, socialisation and personal responsibility.

Poetry and its creations, philosophy research and classifications alike awoke the sleeping ideas in my mind and gave me new ones. –Mary Shelley, The Last Man.

The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck (1830)

Crossing to another genre, this book is a romantic, historical novel about the life of Perkin Warbeck. Warbeck supposedly died in childhood and was replaced by an imposter, Richard of Shrewsbury.

Henry VII is mentioned in the book and described as a hateful character who hates his wife. Henry VIII makes a cameo as a cruel child. The book is based on facts Mary researched and incorporates much storytelling.

The Mortal Immortal (1833)

This is a short story, which was widely acclaimed. The main protagonist, Winzy, has cursed himself. Heartbroken by the lover who has spurned him, Winzy downs his wizard master’s potion in a semi-suicide attempt. It does the opposite and makes him immortal, though not invincible. Doomed to carry on for centuries, growing older and weaker in body and spirit but forbidden the mercy of dying, Winzy exists as a cautionary tale for anyone carrying around the belief that living forever is a soft, desirable fate

Lodore (1835)

In Lodore, Shelly focuses on power and responsibility in a microcosm family. The central story follows the fortunes of the wife and daughter of the title character, Lord Lodore, who is killed in a duel at the end of the first volume, leaving a trail of legal, financial, and familial obstacles for the two "heroines" to negotiate

The Lives of the Most Eminent Literary and Scientific Men (1829 - 1846)

This work was one that Mary worked on for many years. It was also her most financially rewarded project. It offered her a steady paycheck whilst she was trying to bring her son up.

The work was for Dionysius Lardner’s  Cabinet Cyclopædia. It was ten volumes long, a mountainous enterprise, but her son’s schooling and living expenses were pricey, and she was a determined mother and writer.

This encyclopedia offered readers short but richly informative blurbs about great European men of science and literature. Mary Shelley was its most prolific contributor. Denied access to many research materials due to her sex and low social standing, Shelley had to rely on her greatest and most powerful source to get the job done: her own brilliant mind. which has in the past caused contraversy as many question how accurate the telling is.

Falkner (1837)

As a six-year-old orphan, Elizabeth Raby prevents Rupert Falkner from committing suicide; Falkner then adopts her and brings her up to be a model of virtue.

However, she falls in love with Gerald Neville, whose mother Falkner had unintentionally driven to her death years before. When Falkner is finally acquitted of murdering Neville's mother, Elizabeth's female values subdue the destructive impulses of the two men she loves, who are reconciled and unite with Elizabeth in domestic harmony.

Mathilda (Published Posthumously)

The novel deals with a father's incestuous love for his daughter. This book was actually written by Mary very early on in her career. Large portions of it were completed whilst she was separated from her father. Many have questioned what proportion of it was written from personal experience.

It is largely thought that Mathilda represents Mary herself, whilst her father is portrayed as Mathilda's father. The poet Woodville that is in the book it thought to be Percy. Although the people are based on real characters in her life, many have argued how much of the story's plot is from the author's imagination and how much is based on events that happened to her.

Mary Shelley

Frankenstein was originally published without an author assigned as a mixture of ingrained sexism, and primary envy meant that most people were unwilling to admit an eighteen-year-old girl could have written such a story.

Frankenstein continues to enthral readers. Although initially condemned by some critics, readers devoured it and made the legacy of Mary Shelley. It is primarily considered the birth of science fiction, a genre going from strength to strength.

For an eighteen year old girl to produce a masterpiece like Frankenstein is extremely rare. It is clear from her childhood that Mary was encouraged to write; her mother's success must have been a great motivator for her.

At the time, though, Frankenstein received many bad reviews; the readers devoured it and made it the success it was. This was further aided when it found its way to the stage. Once Hollywood found the story, Mary Shelley was ingrained in all our minds.

If you haven't read Frankenstein I urge you to pick it up over this spooky month. If you have only ever seen the film versions, I am sure you will be quite surprised a whole section of the book never makes any interpretation I have seen.

If you have read Frankenstein, pick up another novel; her talent is endless.