Although little is known about Mary Shelley’s short life, she is most famously regraded as the author of “Frankenstein”. “Frankenstein” was published in 1818 but it is still one of the most frequently read novels to this day. What is most important to understand about Shelley’s influence on her writing is the frequent deaths she experienced through her lifetime. Here we look in-depth at this astounding writer’s most significant life events, and how the various deaths contributed to what we understand to be a central theme “Frankenstein”.
1797
Mary Shelley (Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin) was born on August 30th, 1797 in London, England to William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft. Her father was a philosopher and political writer, while her mother is famed feminist author of “The Vindication of the Rights of Woman” (1792). Her mother was one of the first to argue for an educational reform, giving women equal access to schooling as male counterparts. She also wrote “Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman” arguing that women, too, have sexual desires that one cannot pretend otherwise.
Her mother died only eleven days after she was born. Beginning as early as infancy, the deaths of close loved ones shaped Shelley's life.
1801
Her father, Godwin, later remarried Mary Jane Clairmont in 1801. Shelley and her stepmother never had a good relationship. Her stepmother insisted her own daughter, Jane Clairmont, should be sent away to school to be educated but saw no need for Shelley to be.
Instead of being formally educated, Shelley was lucky enough to have her father’s extensive library and frequent visitors including Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth.
Read more about Coleridge and Wordsworth.
1812
Shelley went to Scotland to stay with William Baxter (a friend of his father's) and his family. There she experienced a very relaxing and tranquil lifestyle.
1815
Shelley gives birth to a daughter on February 22nd, who died two weeks after her birth. Shelley never named this daughter due to her short lifespan. Similarly, she never named the monster that Frankenstein created.
Read more about this dynamic here.
The parallel between Shelley's mother dying approximately two weeks after she was born and Shelley's daughter dying two weeks after Shelley gave birth to her reflects a key theme in Frankenstein: creator abandoning creation and vice versa. Though the circumstances were different, Frankenstein abandoning his monster wrestles with this aspect of Shelley's life in which she lost both her mother and her daughter.
1816
Shelley gives birth to a son.
Summer 1816
Shelley, her husband, Lord Byron, Jane Clairmont (stepsister), and John Polidori entertain themselves on a rainy day in Geneva, Switzerland by telling ghost stories. It was this day that Mary Shelley planted the seed for her idea that would eventually become Frankenstein.
End of 1816
Shelley’s half-sister Fanny commits suicide. A short time after, Percy’s first wife commits suicide as well.
December 1816
Mary and Percy are finally able to marry.
1817
Another daughter, Clara, is born in Italy.
After, they publish a travelogue of their journeys through Europe “History of a Six Weeks’ Tour” while also continuing to work on Frankenstein
1818
Frankenstein is published under an anonymous author. The Shelleys move to Italy this same year.
Late 1818
Their daughter Clara contracts dysentery and dies. This time was draining for Shelley, as she worried greatly for her daughter's life. Her diary reads: "Nurse the baby, read. Find my baby dead."
1819
Their son William dies of malaria. She started to believe in scientific ideas that individuals could be brought back from the dead. After the death of her son, she writes that the doctor successfully brought him back to life after he lost all consciousness, just for him to die again shortly after. These were definite themes that arose in her revision of her novel as she firmly believed in the possibility of resurrection after death.
November 1819
The Shelley’s only child to live to adulthood, Percy Florence, is born (pictured right).
1822
Percy Byssche Shelley drowns and dies in a sailing accident. Although devoted to her husband, their marriage had many rough patches riddled with adultery and deaths of multiple children. Regardless, she was made a widow at age 24.
After Percy dies, Mary Shelley publishes another of edition of Frankenstein. An essential difference between the original edition of Frankenstein and the second edition is the role of Frankenstein as a victim of destiny rather than a creator of evil. Instead of being able to entirely manipulate reality, he is at the mercy of a greater fate. This shift suggests that Mary Shelley may be ruminating on our inability to defy our mortality.
Feb 1823
Novel Valperga is published.
1826
Novel The Last Man is published.
This is the only other novel by Shelley to express her grief as Frankenstein sought to do. The Last Man is set in the future where one single man has survived the end of humanity, and must fend to save his own life.
1837
Novel Falkner is published.
1839
Shelley publishes a collection of poems of her late husband Percy Shelley, along with essays and assorted writing.
1851
Mary Shelley dies on February 1, 1851 at age 53 of brain cancer in London, England. She was buried at St. Peter’s Church in Bournemouth alongside the cremated remains of her husband.
Before her death, her loneliness consumed her day-to-day life. She had outlived all those she loved, including other writers of this time period. Mary Shelley wrote of her life: "[I am] the last relic of a beloved race, my companions extinct before me."
Her son had Mary’s parents remains exhumed and moved beside her at the family’s tomb.
As you can tell, Shelley did not lead the easiest of lives despite her novel’s significant success. She faced the hardship of being a woman in 19th century England and navigated poverty later in life. But most significantly during her lifetime, she mourned the deaths of a mother, husband, and three children that resulted in the timeless novel of “Frankenstein”.