Post on 24-Dec-2015
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797-
1851)
AP EnglishMr. Delhagen
Early Life
• Born in Somers Town, London, on August 30th, 1797
• Mary’s mother died 10 days after she was born, from puerperal fever
• Her father raised her and her half-sister (Mary Wollstonecraft’s child, Fanny, from an earlier affair
Parents
William Godwin (1756-1836)Journalist, philosopher, and novelist
Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797)Educator and feminist philosopherknown for: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
Parents
• Wollstonecraft and Godwin were eminent thinkers of their time.
• In spite of despising the institution of marriage, they married so their child could enter society.
• Adhered to revolutionary
principles in both politics and their private lives.
Parent Influence
• Knew her mother only through her writings.
• Utmost stress placed on female independence.
• Influence seen in Mary’s retention of her mother’s name (went by Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin until she married- dropped Godwin, retained Wollstonecraft).
Parent Influence
• Godwin remarried Mary Jane Vial (Clairmont)
• Mary Jane brought two of her own children to the marriage.
• Mary Jane did not encourage intellectual curiosity and did not raise Mary according to her mother’s principles.
Parent Influence
• Mary never went to school, but was taught to read and write at home.
• Her father encouraged her to use her imagination, so she started “scribbling” at a very young age.
• Gave her access to his extensive library of English authors.
Parent Influence
• William Godwin had many friends who would come by for discussions: political, philosophical, scientific, literary, etc.
• Godwin allowed Mary to sit quietly in a corner and listen to these discussions.
• Some of his friends included William Wordsworth, Charles and Mary Lamb, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and William Hazlitt.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
• One of her father’s frequent visitors was the widely admired poet Percy Shelley.
• When Mary was 16, she and Percy eloped to France (he was still married- SCANDAL!)
• They married in 1816 and lived together for eight years until his untimely death in a boating accident
Personal Tragedies
• Percy Shelley died in a boating accident at age 29 in 1822
• In her journal, Mary described her years with Percy as “romantic beyond romance.”
• Mary’s romance with Percy Shelley caused a three-year estrangement from her father.
• Mary gave birth to four children in five years, three of whom died as infants.
Later Life and Death
• Following Percy’s death in 1822, Mary Shelley returned to England and supported herself, her son, and her father with her writings.
• She write four novels, including The Last Man (1826), a futuristic story about the destruction of the human race.
• She collected and annotated Percy Shelley’s poems for publication to preserve his literary legacy.
• She died in 1851 after a long illness, some have hypothesized was a brain tumor.