Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley and the Birth of Frankenstein

On Screen Text/Visual Description: In 1831 Mary Shelley wrote these words for the introduction of her enduring masterpiece, Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus:
“Everything must have a beginning, to speak in Sanchean phrase; and that beginning must be linked to something that went before.”
Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin was born in London on August 30, 1797. Both her parents, William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, were celebrated writers themselves. Mary Godwin became pregnant at 16 and eloped with the 21-year-old Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, even though he already had a pregnant wife, Harriet, in London. Two years later, Godwin, Shelley, and Shelley's step sister met the charismatic Romantic poet Lord Byron at Villa Diodati in Cologny, Switzerland. It was June 1816, dubbed the “year without a summer,” and the weather was abysmal. Stuck indoors because of storms, they read ghost stories out of the anthology Fantasmagoriana. Byron proposed that each of them should try and write a scary story themselves. While her friends worked on writing their own tales, Godwin was stumped. Then one night, her imagination conjured a nightmarish vision: a twisted student, assembling an unnatural creature that lives on to terrify its creator. Godwin, at age 18, began writing her scary story. It was a difficult time for the young woman. Her half sister took her own life in 1816, as did Harriet, Percy’s first wife. Now officially married to Percy, Mary Shelley was pregnant again, living in Bath, England, while her husband was often away. On January 1, 1818, a small London publisher printed 500 copies of Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus on the cheapest paper available. Mary Shelley, now 20 years old, released this first edition anonymously. The novel quickly became a phenomenon, and four years later Shelley released another edition under her name. The most common version of Frankenstein today is the 1831 edition, which includes some substantial revisions and an introduction in which Shelley recounts that eventful summer of 1816. Mary Shelley’s life, just like that of Victor Frankenstein, was full of loss. Shortly after she was born, her mother, the feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft, died. Percy Bysshe Shelley died in 1822; Lord Byron followed two years later. Of Mary Shelley’s four children, only Percy Florence Shelley, named for his father, survived to adulthood. Mary Shelley herself died February 1, 1851, when she was 53 years old. More than 200 years after Frankenstein was first printed, tens of thousands of copies still sell annually. Shelley’s story lives on, not just in her novel but in countless adaptations to comics, television, theater, and film. Frankenstein’s monster is an iconic and influential figure in pop culture at large, a testament to Mary Shelley’s talent and creativity.