Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, the daughter of William Godwin
(see Vol. IV) and Mary Wollstonecraft, was born in London,
August 30, 1797, and married to the poet Shelley in 1816, on
the death of his first wife Harriet. Two years previous to
this she had eloped with Shelley (see Vol. XVIII) to
Switzerland, and they lived together in Italy till his death
in 1823, when Mrs. Shelley returned to England, and continued
her literary work. "Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus,"
the first of Mary Shelley's books, was published in 1818, and
owed its origin to the summer spent by the Shelleys on the
shores of Geneva when Byron was their neighbour. It was "a
wet, ungenial summer," according to the account Mary Shelley
has left. "Some volumes of ghost stories, translated from the
German into French, fell into our hands." Then one evening
Byron said, "we will each write a ghost story," and the
proposition was agreed to, and Mary Shelley's contribution was
developed till at length "Frankenstein" was written. The story
is at once a remarkable and impressive performance. The
influence of Mrs. Shelley's father is apparent throughout, but
probably the authoress was most influenced by the old German
tales of the supernatural. The theme of a mortal creating, by
the aid of natural science, a being in the shape of man, was
at the time a bold and daring innovation in English
literature. Mrs. Shelley died February 21, 1851.
_I.--Robert Walton's Letter_