Mary Shelley (nee Mary Wollstonecraft Godvvin; 30 August 1797 - 1 February 1851) was a British novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel vvriter, best known for her Gothic novel Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus (1818). She also edited and promoted the vvorks of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley. Her father was the political philosopher VVilliam Godvvin, and her mother was the philosopher and feminist Mary vVollstonecraft.Mary Godvvin´s mother died vvhen she was eleven days old; after-vvards, she and her older half-sister, Fanny Imlay, vvere raised by her father.

When Mary vvas four, Godvvin married his neighbour, Mary Jane Clairmont. Godvvin provided his daughter with a rich, if infor-mal, education, encouraging her to adhere to his liberal political theories. İn 1814, Mary Godvvin began a romantic relationship with one of her father´s political follovvers, the married Percy Bysshe Shelley.

Together with Mary´s stepsister, Claire Clairmont, they left for France and travelled through Europe; upon their return to England, Mary vvas pregnant with Percy´s child. Över the next tvvo years, she and Percy faced ostracism, constant debt, and the death of their prematurely born daughter. They married in late 1816 after the suicide of Percy Shelley´s first vvife, Harriet.