Mary Shelley was an author before her time. The mother of Frankenstein’s Monster knew how to write a skin-tingling story and perfected the craft almost as early as any writer and has created a template for horror that many try to emulate, but few succeed in doing so.
Born Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin in 1797, she enjoyed a relatively happy childhood, despite her mother’s death shortly after Mary was born. However, she wasn’t particularly educated, but her father did all he could to teach her what he knew.
Just before she turned 17, she met and fell in love with Percy Bysshe Shelley, a radical poet and philosopher. Her father disapproved, creating a fractitious relationship between the two. It did not help that Percy was married at the time and was due to be a father himself. Despite being so young, Mary became pregnant too, but unfortunately lost the baby at an early stage.
A year later, the pair and their son went boating on Lake Geneva, which is where Mary thought of the idea for Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus. She became Mary Shelley after marrying Percy in the same year. The book was finished and then published in 1818 and created a legacy in the process.
On her birthday, let’s take a look at Mary Shelley’s best quotes.
Nothing contributes so much to tranquilizing the mind as a steady purpose — a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye.
I do not wish women to have power over men; but over themselves.
Elegance is inferior to virtue.
Life is obstinate and clings closest where it is most hated.
My dreams were at once more fantastic and agreeable than my writings.
That final one is a fantastic bit of wisdom.
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