#helenmoore

#VoicesFromtheStacks

 Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley 

With Halloween around the corner, modern day adaptations of Frankenstein’s Monster are everywhere, particularly in for form of popular movie adaptations such as Mel Brooks' 1974 Young Frankenstein and Kenneth Branagh's 1994 Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. How many of you have read the original story by author Mary Shelley to get in the Halloween spirit?

In 1816, at just 18 years old, Mary Shelley famously spent a summer with her husband Percy Shelley, and friends Lord Byron, Claire Clairmont, and John Polidori near Geneva, Switzerland, where Shelley conceived the idea for her novel Frankenstein.

Her life was fraught by illness and loss, including the deaths of three out of her four children, her husband drowning in 1822, and a brain tumor which lead to her death at age 53. In her life time, she was recognized as a serious author, publishing many novels after Frankenstein, such as the historical novels Valperga (1823) and Perkin Warbeck (1830), the apocalyptic novel The Last Man (1826). 

However, for a period of time after her death, she was largely remembered as the wife of Percy Shelley, and some even doubted that she could be the author of Frankenstein. 

This is shown on the second book showcased today, a biography of Mary Shelley from 1886. The author writes “It may not be overstating it to say that that one of the chief interests we have in her, arises from a worthy curiosity to know what manner of women it was who could be so completely the companion...with so marked a genius as (Percy) Shelley.” (audition mine)

Times have changed, and Mary is receiving the accolades she so deserves. Now when you hear the name Shelley, it is Mary you think of first. 

You can learn more about the first book featured in this post, a modern fine art letterpress version of Frankenstein, here.