1. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft:
republican ideals
feminist: for women’s education & independence
died about 11 days after birth of Mary
and William Godwin:
egalitarian state, free of laws and gov’t, organized in small communities where worked and studied daily
both against legalized marriage (married 5 months before Mary’s birth)

2. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
published her first poem at age 11
at 16 ran away with married Shelley to France and Switzerland
wrote Frankenstein at 19
out of 4 children only one survived
Percy drowned in a boating accident (1822)
Mary died in 1851
Frankenstein considered a major gothic work and the first science fiction novel

3. Other titles:
The Last Man (1826): the end of civilization, gradual destruction of human race, seen as a “total corrosion of patriarchal order”
also:
Mathilde (1819, not pub. until 1959)
Proserpine and Midas, mythological drama (1820)
Valperga (1823)
The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck (1830),
Lodore (1835), Falkner (1837)
Rambles in Germany and Italy (1844)
a variety of short stories, essays and poems

5. Frankenstein (1818, 1831) The Author’s introduction
Walton’s letters: why does Shelley frame the novel with Walton’s letters?
what issues/themes do they raise?
the scientist and discovery:
benefit to mankind
glory
the question of education
parent-child relationship/responsibility
gender characteristics / separation of sexes
class
friendship/isolation
man vs. nature
reliability of narrative transmission
How are these issues developed in Frankenstein’s narrative?