Mary Shelley was born to infamous parents
Another interesting fact about Mary Shelley is that she was born on August 30, 1797, to the feminist author and activist Mary Wollstonecraft and political theorist William Godwin. Mary was destined to have a pretty distinctive personality. Only 12 days after Mary's birth, her mother passed away, yet Mary spent countless hours reading her mother's feminist literature and visiting her cemetery.
William Godwin, her father, was an outspoken opponent of aristocratic privilege and an advocate of anarchy and utilitarianism. The pamphlet An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice and the book Things as They Are; or, The Adventures of Caleb Williams are among his most well-known writings. St. Leon: A Tale of the Sixteenth Century, another intriguing book by Godwin, tells the story of a French aristocrat who learns the key to life's immortality. Although St. Leon isn't widely read today, many scholars think its concepts impacted Shelley's writing of Frankenstein.
Both parents led unconventional lives that would have been unorthodox today. They were adamantly opposed to the institution of marriage, had several partners throughout their lives, and frequently wrote surprising things. Being raised in such a setting had a significant impact on Mary Shelley's development as a female author in 19th-century England.
A fantastic intellectual challenge for Mary Mary did not have a formal education, but she was exposed to a lot of intellectual stimulation from a young age. In fact, her father's home served as a gathering place for notable thinkers, authors, and poets like William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. She reportedly used to hide behind a sofa as Coleridge read aloud his poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner as a little girl. This poetry had a significant impact on her novel Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus.
