Mary, mother of science fiction

ary Shelley (1797-1851)was the only child of Mary Wollstonecraft, the famous feminist, and William Godwin, a philosopher and novelist. She was the lover, then wife, of Percy Bysshe Shelley.

Like Elizabeth Frankenstein, Mary's mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, died soon after childbirth, and like Elizabeth Frankenstein, from an early age Shelley was surrounded by famous philosophers, writers and poets, like Coleridge and Charles Lamb.

Frankenstein had its genesis at a gathering during the summer of 1816, in Geneva, Switzerland. The group included her step-sister, Claire Clairmont, Shelley, Lord Byron, and John Polidori, Byron's physician. Lord Byron had the idea that each in the party should write a ghost story, and thus history's first science fiction novel was written, by a writer still only 19 years old.

This gathering is notable also because Polidori began the The Vampyre, arguably the first modern vampire tale (the main character, Lord Ruthven, is suspected by many to be based on Byron). But it is Shelley's seminal work that deserves the most homage, capturing the fears and ambitions of an era that thought anything would be possible once man had tamed nature. Also successfully woven through the novel are themes of child and parent, and the noble savage, a provocative idea of the day.

ack to Off the Shelf.