Born: August 30, 1797 | Died: February 1, 1851
Nationality: British | Genre: Classic Fiction, Gothic Fiction, Science Fiction
Mary Shelley was an English novelist best known for Frankenstein (1818), a groundbreaking blend of Gothic mood and speculative science that helped shape modern science fiction. The daughter of philosopher William Godwin and feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft, she grew up amid bold ideas about reason, freedom, and equality. As a teenager she eloped with the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and, during a stormy summer with friends on Lake Geneva, conceived the story of Victor Frankenstein and his creature—an enduring meditation on ambition, responsibility, and what it means to be human.
After Percy’s death by drowning in 1822, Shelley supported herself and her son through steady, disciplined work. She wrote novels such as Valperga, The Last Man, Lodore, and Falkner; produced travel writing and biographies; and carefully edited and promoted Percy’s poetry, securing his reputation. Her life carried heavy losses, but her prose is clear-eyed and compassionate, often asking how sympathy, knowledge, and power should be used. Today, Mary Shelley stands as a key voice of the Romantic era and an early architect of science fiction’s moral imagination.
Whence, I often asked myself, did the principle of life proceed? …yet with how many things are we upon the brink of becoming acquainted, if cowardice or carelessness did not restrain our inquiries.
fromFrankensteinbyI had worked hard for nearly two years, for the sole purpose of infusing life into an inanimate body… but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart. Unable to endure the aspect of the being I had created, I rushed out of the room, and continued a long time traversing my bed-chamber, unable to compose my mind to sleep.
fromFrankensteinbyI ought to be thy Adam; but I am rather the fallen angel, whom thou drivest from joy for no misdeed. Everywhere I see bliss, from which I alone am irrevocably excluded. I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend. Make me happy, and I shall again be virtuous.
fromFrankensteinbyI am malicious because I am miserable. Am I not shunned and hated by all mankind? You, my creator, would tear me to pieces, and triumph; remember that, and tell me why I should pity man more than he pities me? You would, with a satisfied conscience, destroy your own creature.
fromFrankensteinbyIf I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear; and chiefly towards you my arch-enemy, because my creator, do I swear inextinguishable hatred. I will work at your destruction, nor finish until I desolate your heart, so that you shall curse the hour of your birth.
fromFrankensteinbyNothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change. The sun might shine, or the clouds might lower; but nothing could appear to me as it had done the day before.
fromFrankensteinbyThus strangely are our souls constructed, and by such slight ligaments are we bound to prosperity or ruin. One event, one sudden and irresistible event, bursts these ligaments; and we appear a mere plaything of chance and passion.
fromFrankensteinbyI am alone and miserable; man will not associate with me; but one as deformed and horrible as myself would not deny herself to me. My companion must be of the same species, and have the same defects. This being you must create.
fromFrankensteinbyThe fallen angel becomes the malignant devil. Yet even the enemy of God and man had friends and associates in his desolation; I am alone.
fromFrankensteinbyLife and death appeared to me ideal bounds, which I should first break through, and pour a torrent of light into our dark world.
fromFrankensteinbyLearn from me, if not by my precepts, at least by my example, how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge.
fromFrankensteinby