Frankenstein, Or the Modern Prometheus: The 1818 Text

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797-1851) was the daughter of novelist and political philosopher William Godwin and radical writer and pioneer of women's rights Mary Wollstonecraft, who died when Mary was an infant. Though she received no formal education, many of England's leading writers and intellectuals were frequent guests in her father's house. In 1814, she met the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley; the two were married in 1816. Shelley wrote many novels and remarkable essays and "rambles" or travel books during her lifetime, though she is best known for Frankenstein: Or a Modern Prometheus, which she first published anonymously in 1818 and subsequently revised and republished in 1823 and 1831. Shelley's other novels include Valperga (1823), The Last Man (1826), Lodore (1835), and Falkner (1837). Her novella, Maurice, or The Fisher's Cot was not published until 1998.