#valperga

The woman herself, today we celebrate Halloween by taking a look at Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797-1851).

Born in Somers Town, London to a feminist mother (Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, 1792) and an anarchist father (William Godwin, An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, 1793), Shelley's mother died almost immediately, leaving Godwin to raise both her and her older half-sister (her mother's illegitimate child) despite being deeply in debt. Shelley's childhood was largely happy, but when Godwin remarried, she disliked her new stepmother and stepsiblings.

In 1812, she was sent to live with the Baxter family near Dundee, Scotland, a family of radicals (the 18th century political movement that would advocate for democratic reform and eventually turn into social liberalism). It was here she started writing.

In 1814, she met Percy Bysshe Shelley, himself a radical reformer who had alienated his wealthy aristocratic family due to his plans to redistribute their hereditary wealth. They eloped and left for France.

Their marriage was not perfect--though both believed marriage to be regressive and in free love, Percy had extramarital partners while Mary did not. Mary's father refused to have anything to do with her after the elopement, and neither had as much money as they were used to.

In 1831, Mary Shelley, Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, and John William Polidori sat in a room, where Lord Byron dared them each to write a ghost story. What started as a short story became Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818), notable for Mary Shelley being perhaps the only person to invent a monster rather than take one from mythology.

I found these two at a used bookstore yesterday, so I had to get both of course.

Kiss me; - oh! thy lips are cold;
 Round my neck thine arms enfold- 
They are soft, but chill and dead;
 And thy tears upon my head 
Burn like points of frozen lead.