Mary Shelley

Recounting the dramatic life of the woman behind history's most legendary monster, Miranda Seymour unbuttons a world of brilliant literary figures in Mary Shelley and weaves a rich tapestry of nineteenth-century Europe in which Frankenstein was born.

Mary Shelley is the definitive account of the gifted and tragic author whose escape to France at seventeen with the married poet Percy Bysshe Shelley caused great scandal in London and permanently scarred her reputation. The couple traveled, with Mary's stepsister Claire Clairmont in tow, from France to Italy and Switzerland. In the summer of 1816 they rented a villa near Lord Byron's on Lake Geneva where, on a famous night of eerie thunderstorms, they told ghost stories and tales of horror. From that night emerged the idea of Frankenstein, a monster who has become an archetype of societal rejection and has haunted imaginations for nearly two hundred years. His creator was an eighteen-year-old girl.

Tragedy shadowed Mary; she came to lose three of her four children in infancy, and when she was twenty-four, Shelley drowned off the coast of Italy. After his death she moved back to a bleak and impoverished England with her only remaining child and was reduced to hack writing to make ends meet.

The Mary we meet here, brilliantly brought to life by Seymour from unexplored sources, is flawed, brave, generous, and impetuous. Seymour's fresh examination is dynamic and balanced. It delves into Mary's often overlooked final years as well as her varied experiences that wove together to create her masterpiece, Frankenstein.