Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft

English writer. She is best known as the author of the gothic novel Frankenstein (1818), which is considered to be the origin of modern science fiction, and her other novels include The Last Man (1826) and Valperga (1823).

She was the daughter of the English writers Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin. Her mother died shortly after her birth. In 1814 she eloped to Switzerland with the English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, whom she married in 1816 on the death of his first wife Harriet. All but one of their children died in infancy. While abroad, they stayed with English poet Lord Byron. Following her husband's tragic drowning , Mary returned to England in 1823. She jealously preserved his memory and edited his poems, letters, and essays between 1830 and 1840.