A Mary Shelley Encyclopedia

Mary Shelley (1797‐1851), daughter of the novelist Mary Wollstonecraft and the radical philosopher William Godwin, married the revolutionary and poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. Yet Mary's work is often overlooked, overshadowed perhaps by her husband's rebellious personality (he was expelled, like many great thinkers, from Oxford University for advocating political unrest) and his poetic masterpieces such as Prometheus Unbound and The Mask of Anarchy. Her work also had to contend with the popular fiction of Jane Austen (Northanger Abbey and the first edition of Frankenstein were both published in 1818).

The couple are undoubtedly the best‐known married partnership of...