The Life of Mary Shelley

Mary Shelley was a second-generation Romantic literary figure. Ironically, both of her parents were very well known in the Romantic age as well. William Godwin, Mary’s father, was a philosopher and novelist, and her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, was an author and feminist (Woodbridge). They were married in 1797 despite the fact that Godwin disapproved of marriage, which only proved his true feelings for his wife. Their marriage lasted a short six months when Mary Wollstonecraft …

…s parents and herself helped to shape the Romantic era. Many poets of Mary Shelley’s generation died young in the 1920s, but Mary lived on into the Victorian Age. Her death was said to have poetic timing because it was also the time of the Great Exhibition opening, which was a showcase of technological progress, and it was the same scientific technology that she had warned against in her most famous book, Frankenstein (Woodbridge).