Books by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797–1851) was an English novelist, essayist, and biographer who revolutionized world literature at age eighteen by creating Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818), widely acknowledged as the foundational work of modern science fiction. Daughter of pioneering feminist Mary Wollstonecraft and radical philosopher William Godwin, and wife of Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary was immersed from childhood in cutting-edge political and scientific ideas. Conceived during the famous 'year without a summer' of 1816 near Lake Geneva, Frankenstein combined gothic horror, Romantic idealism, and galvanic science to explore the moral perils of unchecked scientific hubris, parental abandonment, and societal prejudice against the other. Beyond Frankenstein, Shelley authored groundbreaking works including The Last Man (1826), a pioneering apocalyptic sci-fi novel depicting the collapse of civilization, while tirelessly editing and promoting her late husband’s literary estate, cementing her legacy as a visionary literary pioneer.