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Frankenstein By Mary Shelley. Early Life. Born Mary Wollstonecraft on August 30, 1797 in London, England. Her father and mother were both well known authors. Shelley’s mother died ten days after Mary was born.
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Early Life • Born Mary Wollstonecraft on August 30, 1797 in London, England. • Her father and mother were both well known authors. • Shelley’s mother died ten days after Mary was born. • In her childhood, Mary Shelley educated herself amongst her father's intellectual circle, which included critic William Hazlitt, essayist Charles Lamb and poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. • Her first published work was a poem at the age of ten.
Personal Life • One of her father’s friends Percy Byeshee Shelley had just joined the intellectual circle in 1812 when he met Mary. Mary ran away with him to France and Switzerland. • They wed in 1816 and had a daughter who died at a young age in Venice, Italy. • They together wrote History of a Six Weeks' Tour in 1817 about their life. • They moved back to England soon after and Mary gave birth to their son, William.
How She Wrote Frankenstein • While in Switzerland, with her husband, Lord Byron, and Claire Clairmont on a stormy night Lord Byron told Mary Shelley to write a ghost story. • Percy encouraged Mary to write and within a year she finished the novel Frankenstein. • “In her 'Introduction' to the 1831 edition Mary revealed that she got the story from a dream, in which she saw ‘the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with a uneasy, half vital motion.’” (Liukkonen)
End of Her Life • In the first edition of the novel it had a preface unsigned by Percy Shelley. Many people thought he was the author because no way could a nineteen year old female could write such a great novel. • Shelley gave up writing long fiction when realism started to gain popularity, exemplified in the works of Charles Dickens; therefore, she later wrote short stories. • None of Shelley’s later novels matched the achievement of Frankenstein. • Mary Shelley died on February 1st 1851. She was fifty-four. • The novel has inspired over fifty films.
Gothic Genre • Popular during the 18th and 19th centuries in England. • They were often mysterious, involving the supernatural, and heavily tinged with horror. • The setting usually has some sort of dark backgrounds with castles or medieval ruins. • Most of the time it has a psychotic maniac of some sort.
Science Fiction • Based on writing rationally. • Exploring the consequences of scientific innovations is one purpose of science fiction, making it a "literature of ideas" • Characters: such as robots, aliens, and humanoids • Setting: future or historical past. • Technology could be ray guns, computers, machines, or teleportation devices
