Mary Shelley was born Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin on August 30, 1797 to political philosopher William Godwin and famed feminist Mary Wollstonecraft. Her mother died shortly after childbirth and Mary Shelley was left the only child of a widowed father (she had a half-sister named Fanny Imlay who was the result of an affair Wollstonecraft had had with a soldier). Shelley knew death at a young age. Her father eventually remarried to Mary June Clairmont, who brought her two previous children into the household and had a son with Godwin. That meant two half-siblings and two step-siblings for Shelley and a step-mother she never asked for and never got along with. Her stepmother saw it fit to send her own daughter to boarding school, but thought education was unnecessary for Shelley herself. Although she didn't have a formal education, Mary Shelley made great use of her father's library and could be found reading or daydreaming to escape the difficulties of her family life. She eventually took up writing as a way to cope with it, publishing her first poem at age 10. Because of her father's scoail standing as a prominent political figure, the Godwin household had visits from many prestigious people such as William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. One visitor, Percy Bysshe Shelley (a well-to do poet), caught Mary's eye. The two began a romantic relationship, even though Percy was already married. When her father found out, Mary and Percy eloped to Europe (she was 17) along with Mary's step-sister Jane. Percy had a polyamorous relationship, one with his actual wife, who was estranged some place else and occasionally demanded compensation from Percy to continue to live. Then Percy had Mary and when he was in the mood her step-sister Jane. This new style of love was something Mary and Percy Shelley adamantly believed in and was very counterculture for the time. These actions alienated Mary from her father, who refused to speak to her for years. In 1815, as the Shelleys roamed Europe, Mary and Percy's first child, Clara, was born on February 22 and then died 12 days later due to a premature birth. The lost devasted Mary. The next summer, Mary and Percy were at a mountain retreat in Switzerland with Lord Byron, Jane Clairmont (Shelley's step-sister, who also was pregnant with Lord Byron's child at the time), and John Polidori. On a rainy day, the friends entertained themselves by reading ghost stories. Lord Byron proposed that in a year, the friends should return each with the best chilling tale they could conceive. Mary Shelley took the challenge to heart and began work on what would be Frankenstein (ironically she was the only person to complete the challenge). The vast majority of her masterpiece came to her one night in a lucid dream and Shelley went to work detailing the dream into a story. Near the end of 1816, Mary's half-sister Fanny committed suicide. To only worsen to those problems, Percy's wife also committed suicice, while being pregnant with another man's child. Mary was horrified, but with the death of Percy's former wife, the two were able to marry. In 1818, Mary Shelley completed and published Frankenstein as a 19 year-old girl. Because of that, she also published it anonymously. It was an immense success and the Shelley's moved to Italy. During this time period, Mary lost two more children and Percy Florence was the only of her children to live to adulthood. Mary Shelley was also under constant stress with her husband's adultery and her step-sister Jane (who changed her name to Claire at some point) Clairmont's affairs. In 1822, Mary Shelley was shocked to wake up one morning to the news that her husband had drowned while sailing with a friend in the Gulf of Spezia. She was 24.  Shelley spent the rest of her widowed years raising her son, writing her stories, and promoting her husband's place in literary history. Lord Byron, a longtime friend at this point, provided for Shelley in more ways than one, and Shelley and her son spent most of their times at Byron's estate. She kept a  vial of her husband's cremated heart in her writing desk. At 53, Mary Shelley passed away from brain cancer. She was a well respected writer at the time. One can't help but knowingly nod at her obsession with death and despair. One also can't help but pity her a little bit.