#MacabroCoven: 13 Facts About Mary Shelley

By: Casandra Vicario

A young woman who, at a very young age, wrote one of the best novels of all time… she is Mary Shelley, and here are some facts about her life.

1.- Her full name was: Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley.

2.- Her mother was one of the first feminists in history; one of her most important texts on the subject is titled "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman".

3.- Mary's father, William Goldwin, was a radical philosopher and, for some, a forerunner of anarchism.

4.- Sadly, Mary was only able to spend 10 days with her mother, who died shortly after giving birth to her; as a young woman she frequently visited her mother's grave, and even met her boyfriend Percy Shelley there, who would later become her husband.

5.- Percy Shelley was married and ran away with Mary, abandoning his wife Harriet and their children; Harriet later took her own life, and Mary was indirectly blamed for her death.

6.- Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein at the age of 16; she wrote the outline in a single night at Villa Diodati, and at first people refused to believe she was the author, deliberately publishing it under her husband's name.

7.- She had several children, but all of them died in infancy. The one who lived the longest was named William Shelley and died at age 3; he was buried in Rome. When Percy drowned, he was cremated, and Mary took his ashes to Rome to bury them next to their son. When they opened the grave, they found the remains of an adult, so they searched for the boy's remains, but they were never found. Mary was devastated.

8.- She said she saw her dead children as ghosts, and that they spoke to her and comforted her.

9.- Another anecdote surrounding the death of her husband Percy is that when he was cremated, his heart remained intact; it was given to Mary, who kept it between the pages of one of her husband's poems. She also kept things that had belonged to her dead children, such as locks of hair.

10.- Frankenstein was published in 3 volumes, and its full title is "Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus".

11.- Frankenstein is considered the first science fiction novel, in which a human being is created through science.

12: Other books by Mary Shelley worth reading: Mathilda (1818), Valperga (1823), The Last Man (1826), Perkin Warbeck (1830), Lodore (1835), and Falkner (1837).

13:- She died in 1851 at the age of 53, apparently of a brain tumor.