Mary Shelley

1. Mary Shelley
Tarquini Alessia

2. Who was she?
• Mary Shelley, the author of ‘Frankenstein’,
was a British writer of great importance in the
English literature of the early ninenteenth
century.

3. Life…
• Wife of the famous Percy
Bysshe Shelley, she lived in
the same period of Keats and
Lord Byron and was
considered “daughter of art”.
Her mother Mary
Wollstonecraft was the
founder of liberal English
feminism, while her father
William Goodwin was a
political philosopher and
essays’ author.

4. The inspiration…
• The novel also has a curious behind
story, as it was made for a
competition between friends. During
the trip in 1816 to Europe, Mary and
Percy stayed in lordd Byron’s villa on
lake Genevra with John Polidori.
During their stay, Byron challenged
everyone to a writing competition to
write the best horror story. Mary
Shelley then wrote the myth of
‘Frankestein’, while Polidori wrote
Vampire, a short novel that inspired all
the stories about vampire, such as
Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897).

5. A step forward for the
female gender…
• With ‘Frankenstein’ Mary Shelley broke a
taboo that denied the visionary creativity of
the female writer. In fact, at that time, writing
was considered indecent for high society
ladies.

6. The End