Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley: Biographical:  (1797-1851)

Mary Godwin Shelley is the daughter of the two most brilliant, radical -- and notoriously radical -- English Enlightenment free thinkers of her day.  As a child, she grows up around her father's friends, who include the two most important early Romantic English poets: William Wordsworth and Samuel Coleridge.  At 16 she runs off of one of the most brilliant, and notoriously radical, free thinkers of the Romantic era.  Together they meet up with and live briefly with the brilliant and dashing Lord Byron, who is widely considered to be the first "celebrity".  They will also spend a considerable time with their friend John Keats.  In short, her life begins and develops around some of, if not the, most important intellectual and creative geniuses of the era.

Her life among these people will be marked by endless tragedy.

            Parents: William. Godwin    and Mary Wollstonecraft (also see Vindication )

1797: Mary Wollstonecraft dies two weeks after MS's birth from birthing complications

1798: Following Wollstonecraft's death, Godwin publishes Memoirs of the Author of The Vindication of the Rights   of Women, in which he reveals to the public Wollstonecraft's affairs, one of which produced her first daughter, Fanny, her premarital sex with Godwin, and her two attempts at suicide. Wollstonecraft's name becomes the pariah of England and widely accepted evidence that her feminist philosophy would undermine society.

1812: Percy Bysshe Shelley, recently booted from Oxford for publishing The Necessity of Atheism, leaves his first wife  (Harriet Westbrook (1795-1816)) and becomes Godwin's disciple.  Eventually he will also come to financially support Godwin.

1814: Age 16: runs away and shacks up with , Shelley, who is still married. Mary is pregnant with his child (premature birth 5 months later, child dies within days).  Percy, who takes the Enlightenment concepts of "liberty" and "freedom" to extremes, has affairs with other women, even during the time when Mary is nursing their dying child....

Travel through France and the wreckage of the Napoleonic Wars witnessing first hand the devastating effects of the French Revolution (which had been supported by Godwin, Wordsworth, Shelley etc.)

Godwin and Shelley's father both denounce Shelley and Mary.

1816: Mary at age 19:

:Mary's half sister (Fanny Imlay: daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft and Gilbert Imlay) commits suicide; their father Wm. Godwin refuses to identify or claim the body.

:Percy Shelley's very pregnant ex-wife (Harriet Westbrooke) commits suicide

:Mary marries Percy Shelley

:Birth of son William (dies age 3)

:Hanging out in Geneva with Shelley and Byron (two of the greatest living poets, Byron massive pop star)

:Writes Frankenstein: Or, The Modern Prometheus June 1816 - May 1817

: Prometheus Unbound - P. Shelley

1822: Percy drowns at age 30 (sailing the Don Juan) (1792-1822)

1824: Byron dies at 26 (1788-1824) (illness, was fighting for Greek independence from Turkey)

1851: Mary Shelley dies, age 53