Other writers and friends are often introduced with just their last names - and this could have been made clearer. Written as a biographical novel and not simply a biography, this book is sometimes clunky in style, with 'info-dumps' as a way of relaying information. Shelley's own life was cut far too short, and Mary spent the rest of her life bringing his work to the attention of the public, and writing herself to support her son Percy. Their life was filled with dramas (often caused by Mary's step-sister Claire, who lived with them), never-ending money worries, and personal grief as they lost family members to suicide and illness - including some of their infant children. She was only 19 when she began to write the remarkable Frankenstein. She scandalously ran off with him, totally in love. The daughter of feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin and novelist/philosopher William Godwin, Mary met poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, a married man with children, when she was 16. If Mary Shelley's life had been written as a complete work of fiction, it would be almost unbelievable.
Her writing became her grip on sanity, and Shelley never wavered from his belief in her creative genius - as she believed in his. It was in Italy that they found their spiritual home, their 'paradise of exiles', but it was also there that the loss of her children nearly broke Mary's spirit. They moved constantly throughout England, Switzerland and Italy, escaping creditors, censorious families and ill health. Shelley was little help - his unconventional attitudes to love strained her devotion to its limits. During the nine turbulent years Mary and Shelley were together, Claire was the ever-present third, whose manipulative behaviour often drove Mary to despair.
It was much harder to cope with her jealousy of Claire, her step-sister, who had run away with them and was also in love with Shelley. When she eloped with Shelley, Mary had been quite prepared to suffer condemnation from society. The novel was conceived in a contest with him and Lord Byron to tell ghost stories. By then, she had been living for two years in a scandalous relationship with the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, who was already married with children. Her desire of knowledge is great, and her perseverance in everything else she undertakes, almost invincible." Mary Shelley began Frankenstein in 1814, when she was eighteen.
"She is singularly bold, somewhat imperious, and active of mind.
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