Mary Shelley was a British novelist best known for her Gothic novel Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus. She was born in 1797 in London to feminist philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft and political philosopher William Godwin. Frankenstein tells the story of Victor Frankenstein, a scientist who creates a grotesque but sapient creature in an unorthodox scientific experiment. It was first published anonymously in 1818 when she was 20 years old.