Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Biography

Dromo's Den

SHELLEY, Mary Wollstonecraft (1797–1851). An English author, the second wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley (q.v.), born in London. She was the daughter of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (qq.v.). Her education, under a stepmother's direction, seems to have been that of the average girl of her day and class, save for the intellectual stimulus of the distinguished visitors to her father's house, which must have meant much to one of her alert and active mind. In 1814 she left England with the poet Shelley, whose acquaintance she had made a few months earlier— an acquaintance which soon became a mutual passion. At this time Shelley's troubles with his wife, Harriet, were harassing him, and it was not until 1816 that her tragic death put an end to the complexity of the situation. A fortnight after the news of Harriet's death reached Shelley he married Mary Godwin. The marriage proved on the whole happy, though, at least while her poet husband lived, Mary Shelley had not the insight fully to discern the quality of his greatness, and Shelley found that his wife possessed a quick temper. Of Mary Shelley's writings may be mentioned first the invaluable notes to the four-volume edition of Shelley which appeared in 1839. But for years her pen had been variously busy with romances, journalistic work, and miscellaneous hack work pursued relentlessly, and to the detriment of her health, in order to give her son an education at Harrow and at Cambridge. It was not until 1840, when her father-in-law, Sir Timothy Shelley, settled £400 a year on her son, that the financial pressure was eased for her—a pressure which ceased entirely when, in 1844, Sir Timothy died, and young Percy came to his own. Of her romances The Last Man (1826) and Lodore (1835) are especially interesting because the Adrian of the former book is a portrait of Shelley and because the latter is in large measure, as Professor Dowden was the first to discover and explain, a veiled autobiography in which its author and Shelley and those who played a part in the events of their early years together appear. Her Frankenstein (1818) is an effective romance of terror. In addition should be mentioned Rambles in Germany and Italy (2 vols., 1844). Consult the biography by Mrs. Julian Marshall (London, 1889).

The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol. XX (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 810.