Mary Shelley

British author best known for her Gothic novel Frankenstein. Her less famous works include novels such as Valperga, Perkin Warbeck, and The Last Man.

She was tutored by a governess, and she also attended a boarding school for a time during her younger years. She met Percy Shelley, her future husband and literary inspiration, when she was seventeen and he was an already-married twenty-two.

Both of her parents were also writers. Her father was philosopher William Godwin and her mother was feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, who died just ten days after her birth. She married Percy Bysshe Shelley after bearing him an illegitimate child.

She famously created the story of Frankenstein during a scary story contest with poet Lord Byron.