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October 2012
ENGLISH READING CLUB
ENJOY READING! MARY SHELLEY
MARY SHELLEY (30 August 1797, London– 1 February 1851, Bournemouth)
--------------------------------- BIOGRAPHY Mary Shelley (born Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin) was an English novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer. Her father was the political philosopher William Godwin, and her mother was the philosopher and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft. In 1814, Mary Godwin began a romantic relationship with one of her father’s political followers, the married Percy Bysshe Shelley. They married in late 1816 after the suicide of Percy Shelley's first wife, Harriet. In 1816, the couple famously spent a summer with Lord Byron and John Polidori in Switzerland, where Mary conceived the idea for her novel Frankenstein. In 1822, her husband drowned when his sailing boat sank during a storm in Italy. The last decade of her life was dogged by illness, probably caused by the brain tumor that was to kill her at the age of 53. From Frankenstein's first theatrical adaptation in 1823 to the cinematic adaptations of the 20th century, many audiences first encounter the work of Mary Shelley through adaptation. Over the course of the 19th century, Mary Shelley came to be seen as a one-novel author at best, rather than as the professional writer she was; most of her works have remained out of print until the last thirty years, obstructing a larger view of her achievement. In recent decades, the republication of almost all her writing has stimulated a new recognition of its value. Scholars now consider Mary Shelley to be a major Romantic figure, significant for her literary achievement and her political voice as a woman and a liberal.
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History of Six Weeks' Tour through a Part of France, Switzerland, Germany, and Holland, with Letters Descriptive of a Sail round the Lake of Geneva, and of the Glaciers of Chamouni (1817)
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Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818)
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Mathilda (1819)
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Valperga; or, The Life and Adventures of Castruccio, Prince of Lucca (1823)
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The Last Man (1826)
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The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck (1830)
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Lodore (1835)
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Falkner (1837)
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Contributions to Lives of the Most Eminent Literary and Scientific Men (1835–39), part of Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia
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Rambles in Germany and Italy in 1840, 1842, and 1843 (1844)
-------------------- Frankenstein (1818) Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is about a creature produced by an unorthodox scientific experiment. The Modern Prometheus is the novel's subtitle (though some modern publishing of the work now drop the subtitle, mentioning it only in an introduction). Shelley started writing the story when she was eighteen, and the novel was published when she was twenty-one. The first edition was published anonymously in London in 1818. The storyline emerged from a dream. Mary, Percy, Lord Byron and John Polidori decided to have a competition to see who could write the best horror story. After thinking for weeks about what her possible storyline could be, Shelley dreamt about a scientist who created life and was horrified by what he had made. She then wrote Frankenstein Frankenstein is infused with some elements of the Gothic novel and the Romantic Movement and is also considered to be one of the earliest examples of science fiction. The story is partially based on Giovanni Aldini's electrical experiments on dead animals. Shelley's father was very progressive and had encouraged his daughter to participate in the conversations that took place in his home with various scientific minds, many of whom were actively engaged in the study of anatomy. She was familiar with the ideas of using dead bodies for study, the newer practice of using electricity to animate the dead, and the concerns of religion and the general public in regard to the morality of tampering with God's work.