Mary Wallstonecraft Shelley, romantic novelist, biographer and editor, is best known as the writer of Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus (1818). She started to write it at the age of 18 and she was about 21 when the book was published. The first edition of the book had an unsigned preface by Percy Bysse Shelley. Mary Shelly was born on 30 August 1797 in London, England. Her mother died and she was brought up by her father and his second wife. She published her first poem at the age of ten. In 1814, Mary started a romantic relationship with the young Percy Bysshe Shelley and finally married in 1816. Mary’s life was full of tragedy and of four children she bore only their son, Percy Florence was the only surviving child. In 1822, she lost her husband when his boat ‘Ariel’ sank during a storm in the Bay of La Spezia. In 1823, she returned to England and from then concentrated on a career as a professional author. In the last decade of her life, she suffered by brain tumour that was to kill her at the age of 53.None of Shelley’s novels matched the power of her first legendary achievement. Her later works include Ladore (1835) and Faukher (1137), both romantic pot-boilers. Then Mathilde (1819, published in 1959), Valperga (1823) and The Last Man (1826).
