Mary Shelley
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797-1851) was an early novelist who is most famous for her novel Frankenstein. She is widely credited as being one of the pioneers of the Speculative Fiction genre (the others being Mark Twain, Jules Verne, and H. G. Wells). She is also one of the few early female novelists, particularly in the field of Speculative Fiction, and one of the few female authors whose works are regularly read and dissected by college students everywhere.
She was the daughter of the novelist William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, one of the earliest feminists, famous for her work The Vindication of the Rights of Woman, one of the earliest significant modern works in favor women's rights. She pretty much died giving birth to her daughter (eleven days afterwards, to be precise), which may have affected her (that is Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's) life and career significantly.
She was married to the famous Romanticism poet Percy Bysshe Shelley.
Mary Shelley was a very prolific author, writing biographies, poetry, articles, travel journals, and short stories in addition to the novels she is most well-known for. Her novels include:
- Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus
- Valperga
- The Last Man (adapted as the 2008 film of the same name)
- The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck
- Lodore
- Falkner
- Mathilda
- One-Hit Wonder: Only one of Mary Shelley's novels is well-known today: Frankenstein. Although she was taken very seriously in her day, nowadays it's either Frankenstein or being the wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley (even though it was her efforts after his death that kept him from being considered a One-Hit Wonder)...