50 Fun Facts About Mary Shelley

Which pioneering advocate of women's rights was Mary Shelley's mother?

Mary Wollstonecraft argued in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) that women seemed inferior to men only because they were denied an education; her daughter grew up reading her books.

What killed Mary Shelley's mother in September 1797?

Childbed fever killed her 11 days after Mary was born, leaving William Godwin to raise the newborn and her young half-sister Fanny on his own.

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is widely counted among the first novels of which genre?

Science fiction claims Frankenstein as a founding novel because its creature is made by a student's laboratory experiments, not by magic or the supernatural.

What is the first name of the scientist Frankenstein in Mary Shelley's novel?

Victor is the creator, not the creature: the being he makes is never given a name, though 'Frankenstein' is now often used for the monster itself.

When Mary Shelley was a girl, which former American vice-president visited her father's London home?

Aaron Burr, wandering Europe in exile after killing Alexander Hamilton and standing trial for treason, dined with the Godwins and noted the children in his journal.

To which Scottish city was the teenage Mary Shelley sent in 1812 to stay with the Baxter family?

Dundee hosted her for two long stays; she later called the Tay's shores 'blank and dreary' in hindsight, yet said the 'airy flights of my imagination' were born there.

Where did Mary Shelley and Percy Shelley declare their love for each other in June 1814?

At her mother's grave in St Pancras churchyard, where Mary had long gone to read out of her stepmother's way; she was 16, and he was 21 and already married.

Whom did Mary and Percy Shelley take with them when they eloped to France in July 1814?

Mary's stepsister Claire Clairmont came too; her mother pursued the runaways to Calais but failed to win her back and went home without her.

In which region does Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein both open and end?

The Arctic frames the tale: an explorer bound for the North Pole pulls the dying scientist off the ice, hears his story, and at the end watches the creature vanish northward.

What did Mary Shelley dream about her dead baby in 1815?

It came back to life in the dream, she wrote: 'it had only been cold, and that we rubbed it before the fire, and it lived. Awake and find no baby.'

Which epic poem does the Creature find and read as true history in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein?

Paradise Lost gives the Creature two mirrors: like Adam he was made with no one like him, but he decides Satan is 'the fitter emblem' because he envies others' happiness.

Which Lake Geneva house, rented by Lord Byron in 1816, hosted the ghost-story contest that produced Frankenstein?

Villa Diodati stood on the hill above the Shelleys' lakeside cottage; they walked up most evenings, and the whole party sat talking into the small hours.

Which young physician travelled with Lord Byron to Geneva in 1816 and joined Mary Shelley's ghost-story circle?

John William Polidori's own idea for the contest, by Mary's account, was a skull-headed lady; his tale The Vampyre, printed in 1819, was at first wrongly credited to Byron.

How did Mary Shelley later describe the weather at Lake Geneva in 1816?

'A wet, ungenial summer' was her phrase in 1831: incessant rain kept the party indoors for days, reading German ghost stories until Byron proposed that each write one.

Which scientific idea, discussed at Lake Geneva in 1816, fed Mary Shelley's 'waking dream' of a reanimated corpse?

Galvanism, moving dead muscle with an electric current, was notorious from an 1803 London demonstration in which Giovanni Aldini made an executed convict's corpse convulse.

What did Mary Shelley call Frankenstein when she sent it out again in her 1831 introduction?

'My hideous progeny' came with a blessing to 'go forth and prosper': she had an affection for the book, she wrote, as 'the offspring of happy days'.

What is the subtitle of Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein?

The Modern Prometheus likens its scientist to the Titan who, in Greek myth, made the first humans and was then punished by Zeus for stealing fire for them.

Why did many early readers assume Percy Shelley had written Frankenstein?

It was anonymous, with his preface and a dedication to his political hero William Godwin, who was Mary's father; her own name reached the title page only with the second edition.

Which library holds Mary Shelley's Frankenstein notebooks, which show Percy Shelley's corrections?

The Bodleian Library, Oxford, keeps them; Fiona Sampson, who examined the notebooks, judged that Percy 'did rather less than any line editor working in publishing today'.

How did Mary's half-sister Fanny Imlay die in October 1816?

Suicide by laudanum at a Swansea inn: her stepfather Godwin so dreaded the newspapers that the family hid the truth and thought of saying she had gone to her aunts in Ireland.

Where was Percy Shelley's first wife Harriet found drowned in December 1816?

The Serpentine in Hyde Park gave up Harriet's body on 10 December 1816; before the month was out Percy had married Mary, as his lawyers advised, to strengthen his claim to his children.

Mary Shelley's husband Percy was buried in Rome's Protestant Cemetery, also the resting place of which poet?

John Keats was buried there in 1821; Percy drowned the next year with a volume of Keats in his pocket, and the Shelleys' small son William lies in the same cemetery.

What did the Chancery Court rule in 1817 about Percy Shelley's children by Harriet?

He was morally unfit to have custody, Lord Chancellor Eldon ruled, weighing his published views and his leaving Harriet for Mary; the court placed the children with foster parents and made him pay for their keep.

What was the name of Claire Clairmont's daughter by Byron, born in January 1817?

Allegra, first called Alba, was handed to Byron in Venice as a toddler; he later placed her in a convent, where she died of a fever aged five.

Which travel book did Mary Shelley build from the journal of her 1814 elopement with Percy?

History of a Six Weeks' Tour retold the 1814 journey, which lasted only that long because the money ran out in Switzerland and the runaways had to turn for home.

In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, what does the Creature demand that his maker build for him?

A female companion is his price for leaving mankind alone; the scientist half-builds her on a remote Orkney island, then tears her apart, and the Creature swears revenge.

What was the name of Mary's only child to survive to adulthood?

Percy Florence Shelley was named for his father and for Florence, the city of his birth in November 1819; his arrival, after the loss of her other children, at last lifted Mary's spirits.

Which novella about a father's incestuous love for his daughter did Mary write in Italy to cope with grief?

Matilda went to her father to be published, but Godwin called its subject 'disgusting and detestable' and kept the manuscript; it stayed out of print until 1959.

At which German university does the young scientist study in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein?

Ingolstadt, in Bavaria, is where he builds the Creature in a top-floor workshop and then bolts from the room in horror the moment it opens its eye.

How did Percy save Mary's life when she miscarried in Italy in June 1822?

He sat her in a bath of ice that arrived before the doctor did, overruling Claire and Jane Williams, who were afraid to use it; the doctor later said it had saved her.

Near which town did Percy Shelley's body wash ashore after his boat sank in July 1822?

Viareggio's beach became his pyre: quarantine law let his friends move the remains, Mary wrote, 'only on condition that we burn them to ashes', so Byron, Hunt and Trelawny did.

The boat in which Percy Shelley drowned in 1822 was named after which poem by Lord Byron?

Don Juan went down in a sudden storm on 8 July 1822 as Percy sailed home from Livorno, where he had gone to welcome Leigh Hunt and plan a new magazine with Byron.

How did Sir Timothy Shelley, Percy's father, deal with the widowed Mary Shelley?

Only through his lawyers: Sir Timothy would never meet her, kept her on a small allowance, and threatened to stop it if she published a life of his son.

Who played the Monster in the 1931 Hollywood film of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein?

Boris Karloff played him as a grunting, lumbering brute, a long way from the novel's Creature, who is eloquent and unnaturally fast and strong.

In a 2011 London staging of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, which actor alternated the two lead roles with Jonny Lee Miller?

Benedict Cumberbatch and Miller took turns as creator and Creature in Danny Boyle's National Theatre production, and shared the Olivier Award for best actor.

Mary Shelley's future husband Percy was expelled from university in 1811 over a pamphlet arguing for what?

Atheism was the case he had printed as The Necessity of Atheism and posted to bishops and college heads; when he refused to answer questions about it, he was expelled on the spot.

Which disease did Mary Shelley catch in Paris in 1828, though she recovered without scars?

Smallpox put her to bed the moment she reached Paris; she felt 'a monster to look at' as she recovered, yet wrote that she tried to be agreeable to make up for it.

In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, whom does the Creature murder on her wedding night?

Elizabeth Lavenza dies because her bridegroom misreads the threat 'I shall be with you on your wedding-night': he arms himself for a fight and sends her to bed alone.

What wipes out humanity in Mary Shelley's 1826 novel The Last Man?

A plague empties the world until a single man is left; Mary, who had outlived her husband and all but one of her children, wrote that she felt 'the last relic of a beloved race'.

Who played the Creature in Kenneth Branagh's 1994 film Mary Shelley's Frankenstein?

Robert De Niro plays the Creature in a film that, despite its title, adds a scene the novel never had: the scientist revives his murdered bride.

In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, who is the Creature's first murder victim?

The scientist's young brother, William, is strangled, and an innocent servant is executed for the crime; William was also the name of Mary's own small son.

Mary Shelley moved house so her son could be a day pupil at which school, once attended by Byron?

Harrow proved too costly once she boarded him there, so in 1833 Mary left London and moved to the village herself; her father-in-law, Sir Timothy, did little to help.

Whose studio made the first film of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, a silent short of 1910?

Thomas Edison's company put the story on screen first, and its monster takes shape in a cauldron of chemicals instead of being pieced together from the dead; the sound film came two decades later, in 1931.

Which volcano's 1815 eruption disrupted the weather of 1816, the year Mary Shelley began Frankenstein?

Mount Tambora, in what is now Indonesia, is thought to have veiled the sun with ash and gas around the world, and crops failed across Europe and North America the next year.

What did Mary's physician suspect had killed her at 53 in February 1851?

A brain tumour was her physician's suspicion: for more than a decade she had suffered headaches and bouts of paralysis that at times stopped her reading and writing.

Where was Mary Shelley buried in 1851, instead of beside her parents at St Pancras?

St Peter's Church, Bournemouth, stood near her son's new home; rather than bury her at St Pancras, he had her parents' remains dug up and brought to lie beside her.

What did Mary Shelley's family find in her desk after her death?

The remains of Percy's heart, snatched from his funeral pyre by Trelawny, lay in a silk parcel folded inside a page of his poem Adonais, beside locks of her dead children's hair.

In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, who receives the Creature kindly until his horrified family comes home?

A blind old man hears only a gentle, sincere voice; the moment his children walk in and see the visitor, they drive him from the cottage, and the Creature turns against mankind.

How did William Godwin describe his fifteen-year-old daughter Mary?

'Singularly bold, somewhat imperious, and active of mind' was his verdict, set against her half-sister Fanny, whom the same letter calls quiet, modest and somewhat given to indolence.

In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, old books on which discredited art first fire the young scientist's ambition?

Alchemy grips him at 13 through the works of Cornelius Agrippa; his father waves the book away as 'sad trash' without saying why, and he later blames that careless dismissal for his ruin.