Mary was born during the eighth year of the French Revolution. “She entered the world like the heroine of a Gothic tale: conceived in a secret amour, her birth heralded by storms and portents, attended by tragic drama, and known to thousands through Godwin’s memoirs. Percy Shelley would elevate the event to mythic status in his dedication to The Revolt of Islam”.(from page 21 of Romance and Reality by Emily Sunstein.) From infancy, Mary was treated as a unique individual with remarkable parents. High expectations were placed on her potential and she was treated as if she were born beneath a lucky star. Godwin was convinced that babies are born with a potential waiting to be developed. From an early age she was surrounded by famous philosophers, writers and poets: Coleridge made his first visit when Mary was two years old. Charles Lamb was also a frequent visitor.
A peculiar sort of Gothicism was part of Mary’s earliest existence. Most days she would go for a walk with her father to the St. Pancreas churchyard where her mother was buried. Godwin taught Mary to read and spell her name by having her trace her mother’s inscription on the stone.
At the age of sixteen Mary ran away to live with the twenty-one year old Percy Shelley, the unhappily married radical heir to a wealthy baronetcy. To Mary, Shelley personified the genius and dedication to human betterment that she admired her entire life. Although she was cast out of society, even by her father, this inspirational liaison produced her masterpiece, FRANKENSTEIN.
She conceived of FRANKENSTEIN during one of the most famous house parties in literary history. When staying at Lake Geneva in Switzerland with Byron and Shelley. Interestingly enough, she was only nineteen at the time. She wrote the novel while being overwhelmed by a series of calamities in her life. The worst of these were the suicides of her half-sister, Fanny Imlay, and Shelley’s wife, Harriet.
After the suicides, Mary and Shelley, reluctantly married. Fierce public hostility toward the couple drove them to Italy. Initially, they were happy in Italy, but their two young children died there. Mary never fully recovered from this trauma. (Their first child had died shortly after birth early in their relationship.) Nevertheless
