Mary Wollstonecraft Shelly was born in London in 1797. She was the daughter of William Godwin, a political philosopher, and Mary Wollstonecraft, also a philosopher and feminist.Mary's mother sadly died shortly after giving birth to him, and Mary and her half-sister Fanny soon had a half-sister, Claire, when her father remarried Mary Jane Clairmont. Around 1814, Mary met Percy Bysshe Shelly, a Romantic poet and philosopher. They both fell in love; however, Shelly was actually unhappily married to Harriet Westbrook at this time. Although Mary's father forbade her from seeing Shelly (because he was married), they and Claire fled to France for a six-week tour of Europe. When they returned to England, Mary was pregnant with Percy's child, but tragically their premature daughter died. . In 1816, they married shortly after the suicide of Harriet Westbrook. Soon after, the couple spent the summer with Lord Byron, Claire Clairmont and John William Polidori near Geneva, Switzerland. This is where Mary began writing Frankenstein. Although Mary is a novelist, short story writer, playwright, essayist, biographer and travel writer, she was best known for her famous gothic novel Frankenstein: or The Modern Prometheus. refers to a scientist, Victor Frankenstein, who creates a being from dead human body parts. This creature he creates causes havoc, misery and pain. It is an extremely exciting novel, and even Mary was quite surprised to have created such a terrifying novel at the time: “How did I, then a young girl, come to think and develop such a hideous idea? Lord Byron's villa, Diodati, on the shores of Lake Geneva ...... middle of article ......cisBibliographyWeb addresses• http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/themes/gothic.html• http://personal .georgiasouthern.edu/~dougt/goth.html• http://www4.ipl.org/div/litcrit/bin/litcrit.out.pl?ti=fra-63• http://www .victorianweb.org/previctorian/mshelley/pva229.html• http://www.online-literature.com/shelley_mary/• http://www.hiddenlives.org.uk/articles/poverty.html• http:// www.cormorantbooks.com /titles/thefrankensteinmurders.shtmlBooks• Mary Shelley's Introduction to the 1831 edition of Frankenstein• 'Preface', 1831 edition of Frankenstein• Mary Shelly, 1818 Oxford edition of Frankenstein• Mary Shelly - A Literary Life, by John Williams, Great Britain 2000 By Macmillan Press LTD• Pamela Horn, The Victorian Town Child (Stroud: Sutton, 1997)