Mary Shelley was born in 1797 to William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft. Her mother died shortly after giving birth and her father later remarried. At age 15, she went to live with family friends in Scotland due to tension with her stepmother. In 1814, she eloped with the married poet Percy Bysshe Shelley to France after meeting at her father's house two years prior. They traveled to Geneva in 1816 where, inspired by conversations with Lord Byron, Mary began writing what would become her classic novel Frankenstein.