'It was already one in the morning; the rain pattered dismally against the panes, and my candle was nearly burnt out, when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open . . .' Frankenstein
Mary Shelley was born in London on 30 August 1797. Her mother, the celebrated feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft, died a few days after her birth.Her father, William Godwin, a well-known anarchist and atheist writer, tutored Mary. In 1814, when she was sixteen, she fell in love with the married poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and they eloped to France. In 1816 the couple travelled to Lake Geneva to spend the summer with the poet Byron. Mary was inspired to write Frankenstein after Byron arranged a ghost story competition during their stay. In the autumn of 1816 Shelley's pregnant wife drowned herself in the Serpentine in Hyde Park and Shelley immediately married Mary. The couple had four children together but only one son survived infancy. They lived in Italy until Percy's death in a boating accident in 1822. Mary continued to write until her death in London on 1 February 1851. She is buried in Bournemouth.
"A haunting, melancholy work of gothic beauty"
*Independent*
"The most famous of all horror stories still packs a punch"
*Daily Mail*
"A masterpiece"
*Phillip Pullman*
"Frankenstein launched an entire genre of dystopian fiction, and a
legacy of horror at the consequences of unbridled
experimentation"
*Daily Telegraph*
"Shelley’s speechifying, lonely, Miltonic monster remains one of
the greatest characters in all of literature… The book may also be
the greatest meditation on birth I have ever read."
*The Week*
"A haunting, melancholy work of gothic beauty" * Independent *
"The most famous of all horror stories still packs a punch" * Daily
Mail *
"A masterpiece" -- Phillip Pullman
"Frankenstein launched an entire genre of dystopian fiction, and a
legacy of horror at the consequences of unbridled experimentation"
* Daily Telegraph *
"Shelley's speechifying, lonely, Miltonic monster remains one of
the greatest characters in all of literature... The book may also
be the greatest meditation on birth I have ever read." -- Siri
Hustvedt * The Week *
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