Mary Shelley

1797 – 1851 · died at about 54^[1][2]

Literature

Fun Facts About Mary Shelley

• Mary Shelley began Frankenstein after rain kept her circle indoors at Lord Byron's villa near Lake Geneva and Byron proposed that they "each write a ghost story".^[1][3][4]
• Using data on the moon and stars, astronomer Donald Olson concluded that the "waking dream" behind Frankenstein came between 2 and 3 a.m. on June 16, 1816.^[1]
• Mary and the poet Percy Shelley met secretly at the grave of her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, and fell in love when she was 16.^[1][5][6]
• A year after she died, her family opened her desk and found Percy Shelley's poem Adonaïs folded around a silk parcel holding some of his ashes and the remains of his heart.^[1]
• Frankenstein was first published anonymously in 1818, and a later memoir by Edward Trelawny even questioned whether she wrote it.^[1]
• As a girl she met visitors to her father's house such as the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge and former US vice president Aaron Burr.^[1]
• Mary Shelley was alive at the same time as George Washington — their lives overlapped for 2 years (1797–1799).^[1][2][7][8]
• Mary Shelley shares a birthday with Ernest Rutherford: both were born on August 30.^{[1][2][9][10]}

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was an English novelist who wrote the Gothic novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818), which is considered an early example of science fiction. She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley. Her father was the political philosopher William Godwin and her mother was the philosopher and women's rights advocate Mary Wollstonecraft.^[1]

Contemporaries

Jacob Grimm

54 yr overlap

Michael Faraday

54 yr overlap

Charles Babbage

54 yr overlap

Carl Friedrich Gauss

54 yr overlap

Arthur Schopenhauer

54 yr overlap

Heinrich Heine

54 yr overlap

Hokusai

52 yr overlap

Honoré de Balzac

51 yr overlap

John Quincy Adams

51 yr overlap

Victor Hugo

49 yr overlap

Alexandre Dumas

49 yr overlap

Ralph Waldo Emerson

48 yr overlap

Their World

Questions About Mary Shelley

When was Mary Shelley born?

Mary Shelley was born on August 30, 1797, and died on February 1, 1851.

How old was Mary Shelley at death?

Mary Shelley was born on August 30, 1797, and died on February 1, 1851, at age 53.

What was Mary Shelley known for?

Mary Shelley was known for: Author of Frankenstein. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was an English novelist who wrote the Gothic novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818), which is considered an early example of science fiction. She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley. Her father was the political philosopher William Godwin and her mother was the philosopher and women's rights advocate Mary Wollstonecraft.

Who was alive at the same time as Mary Shelley?

Mary Shelley's closest contemporary was Jacob Grimm. Their lives overlapped for 54 years.