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Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft
 Shelley,
Mary Wollstonecraft, 1797–1851, English author; daughter of
William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft. In 1814 she fell in love
with the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, accompanied him abroad, and
after the death of his first wife in 1816 was married to him.
Her most notable contribution to literature is her novel of
terror, Frankenstein, published in 1818. It is the story of a
German student who learns the secret of infusing life into
inanimate matter and creates a monster that ultimately destroys
him. Included among her other novels are Valperga (1823), The
Last Man (1826), and the partly autobiographical Lodore (1835).
After Shelley's death in 1822, she devoted herself to caring for
her aged father and educating her only surviving child, Percy
Florence Shelley. In 1839–40 she edited her husband's works.
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