BECOMING
Mary Shelley
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (née Godwin; 1797-1851) was the daughter of the feminist author Mary Wollstonecraft, who died shortly after birthing her, and the radical philosopher William Godwin. Concerned about his daughter’s wayward nature, Godwin and his new wife, the bookseller Mary Jane Clairmont, arranged for young Mary to spend significant time away from London…
Mary’s life in Dundee
In 1812, aged just fourteen, Mary was sent to live with family friends, the Baxters, on the outskirts of Dundee, a bustling industrial city situated on the Northeast coast, and one full of radical political sentiment. William Thomas Baxter was one such dissenter. Godwin hoped his daughter would be both calmed and inspired in her new environment. Mary lived in a large and busy household, which was ironically nicknamed The Cottage, and forged close friendships with the Baxter girls, especially Isabel. They enjoyed long walks across the woods, beaches and hills surrounding the city. And they revelled in stories of Scottish witchcraft and the occult…
Dundee was an exciting, dynamic place. The surrounding countryside and the position of the city on the banks of the Tay were strikingly beautiful, as were the commanding views of the estuary and Fife from Balgay Hill and the Law, a prominent hill formed from the remains of a volcanic sill shaped during the last ice age. These natural advantages contrasted sharply with the smoggy industrialization and poverty that dominated the city at the time. Such contrasts between tantalizing wonder and gritty reality converged at the once busy harbour. Ships involved in the bloody whaling trade and the romance of Arctic exploration bustled through. Inspired by the unique character of the environment and its people, Mary’s early experiments with writing began around this time, by her own claim, though few recorded words remain. Over the next two years she returned to Dundee before finally settling back in London. There she met the brilliant and scandalous poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, a married man…
Relocation to Geneva
Effectively outcast, the Shelleys, along with Mary’s stepsister Claire Clairmont, relocated to Maison Chapuis, a modest lakeside house near Geneva. Nearby was the more palatial Villa Diodati, then occupied by the world’s most infamous poet, Lord Byron. In 1816 the weather was unseasonably wretched as a major volcanic eruption had caused the “Year without a Summer”, so the group spent their time reading ghost stories and competing in story writing competitions.
Tortured by nightmares and ill health, and spurred by creative rivalry, the future Mary Shelley revisited an idea that had first stirred in her mind while living in Dundee, Frankenstein. In 1818, the year in which her novel was first published, the now-married Shelleys relocated to Italy. Her novel slowly gained rave reviews back home, including one from Sir Walter Scott. But their lives seemed destined for turmoil…
Mary’s later life
In 1822, Percy drowned when his sailing boat sank during a storm near Viareggio. He was 29 years old. Mary returned to England to develop her own career as a professional author and, owing to a lack of sufficient financial aid from her father-in-law, to support her only surviving child, Percy Florence. While her writing covered a wide range of genres and forms, above all she continued to excel in fiction, with such works as the apocalyptic The Last Man (1826), the historical Valperga (1823) and Perkin Warbeck (1830), and her final two novels, Lodore (1835) and Falkner (1837). Amid bouts of immense productivity, her health deteriorated markedly. She died at the relatively young age of 53.
Today Mary Shelley is recognised as a prominent figure in the British Gothic tradition, and her wider body of works, including her short stories, have begun to receive the fuller attention they deserve.
