FAMEPedia:Today's featured article/August 30, 2021

Mary Shelley (30 August 1797 – 1 February 1851) was a British novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer, best known for her Gothic novel Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus. She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley. Her mother was the philosopher and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft and her father was the political philosopher William Godwin. In 1814, Mary Godwin fell in love with the married Percy Shelley. Together with Mary's stepsister, Claire Clairmont, they travelled through Europe; upon their return to England, Mary was pregnant. She and Percy faced ostracism, constant debt, and the death of their prematurely born daughter. In 1822, her husband died and Mary Shelley then devoted herself to the upbringing of her son and a career as a professional author. The last decade of her life was dogged by illness, probably caused by the brain tumour that was to kill her at the age of 53.