Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797-

1851)

AP EnglishMr. Delhagen

Early Life

• Born in Somers Town, London, on August 30th, 1797

• Mary’s mother died 10 days after she was born, from puerperal fever

• Her father raised her and her half-sister (Mary Wollstonecraft’s child, Fanny, from an earlier affair

Parents

William Godwin (1756-1836)Journalist, philosopher, and novelist

Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797)Educator and feminist philosopherknown for: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

Parents

• Wollstonecraft and Godwin were eminent thinkers of their time.

• In spite of despising the institution of marriage, they married so their child could enter society.

• Adhered to revolutionary

principles in both politics and their private lives.

Parent Influence

• Knew her mother only through her writings.

• Utmost stress placed on female independence.

• Influence seen in Mary’s retention of her mother’s name (went by Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin until she married- dropped Godwin, retained Wollstonecraft).

Parent Influence

• Godwin remarried Mary Jane Vial (Clairmont)

• Mary Jane brought two of her own children to the marriage.

• Mary Jane did not encourage intellectual curiosity and did not raise Mary according to her mother’s principles.

Parent Influence

• Mary never went to school, but was taught to read and write at home.

• Her father encouraged her to use her imagination, so she started “scribbling” at a very young age.

• Gave her access to his extensive library of English authors.

Parent Influence

• William Godwin had many friends who would come by for discussions: political, philosophical, scientific, literary, etc.

• Godwin allowed Mary to sit quietly in a corner and listen to these discussions.

• Some of his friends included William Wordsworth, Charles and Mary Lamb, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and William Hazlitt.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

• One of her father’s frequent visitors was the widely admired poet Percy Shelley.

• When Mary was 16, she and Percy eloped to France (he was still married- SCANDAL!)

• They married in 1816 and lived together for eight years until his untimely death in a boating accident

Personal Tragedies

• Percy Shelley died in a boating accident at age 29 in 1822

• In her journal, Mary described her years with Percy as “romantic beyond romance.”

• Mary’s romance with Percy Shelley caused a three-year estrangement from her father.

• Mary gave birth to four children in five years, three of whom died as infants.

Later Life and Death

• Following Percy’s death in 1822, Mary Shelley returned to England and supported herself, her son, and her father with her writings.

• She write four novels, including The Last Man (1826), a futuristic story about the destruction of the human race.

• She collected and annotated Percy Shelley’s poems for publication to preserve his literary legacy.

• She died in 1851 after a long illness, some have hypothesized was a brain tumor.