In Search of Mary Shelley: The Girl Who Wrote Frankenstein (2018) is a biography of the British novelist Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797-1851), author of the 1818 Gothic novel, Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus.
The first edition of Frankenstein was published on 1 January 1818 anonymously, when Mary was 20 years old. Her name appeared on the second edition, published in France in 1823, a year after the death of her husband Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley.
This year marks the 200thanniversary of the novel that spawned the famous monster – a corpse reanimated.
Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein when she was 19 years old. How could a young girl write such a dark novel that spurned a series of Frankenstein movies and monster themes for the next 200 years?
Mary’s mother Mary Wollenstonecraft Godwin was the author of controversial and radical literature of women’s rights, and her father William Godwin was an anarchist, atheist, and utilitarian. Her parents were the ‘most politically, socially and intellectually sophisticated people in London … politically radical, socially nonconformist, not ‘family values’ conservative.’
Mary’s mother died days after young Mary’s birth. Her father devotedly looked after Mary and Fanny, her older sister by three years. Mary was probably an early reader, like her father. But four years later, in 1801, William marries his next-door-neighbour with two children of her own. Mary Jane Clairmont becomes young Mary’s dreaded stepmother. This ‘newly feminized’ environment is well described in the biography.
In 1807 the Godwin family move house and her father establishes a book store, and books are Mary’s escape from a troubled teenage life. When she is 16 years old and the charismatic Romantic poet Percy Shelley (four years her senior) visits her father, the moment is electric. She comes alive. ALIVE!
She elopes with Percy when she is 17 years old. Life with Percy is full of travel, infidelity, debt, at least five pregnancies, the deaths of three of her children, the suicide of her sister Fanny, and the suicide of Percy’s abandoned wife, but it is at this time that she begins writing Frankenstein.
Sampson also writes of Mary’s life after the death of Percy at the age of 29, when Mary is 25 – as she witnesses the success of Frankenstein, and stage and film versions of her novel.
Sampson uses letters, diaries, and records to show how Frankenstein moves from thought to word, and who or what influenced the storyline – all at a time when female writers were discouraged from the craft.
This is a fascinating biography, full of interesting information about the young author Mary Shelley. I would have liked to read more on the actual craft of writing the book and more on the iconic characters. Nonetheless, this is a splendid read.
MARTINA NICOLLSis an international aid and development consultant, and the authorof:- Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom(2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).
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