Mary Shelley

Mary Shelley was born on August 30, 1797, in Somers Town, London to William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft. The beginning stages of Mary’s life were devastating. She never knew her birth mother, as her mother had died a few days after giving birth from a postpartum infection, leaving her with a half-sister and a grieving father.

In 1801, her father remarried to Mary Jane Clairemont, adding two more siblings to their household. Mary Shelley viewed her stepmother as a wicked woman because she paid little attention to her stepdaughter and was often invasive when she did. More ...