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Why We Should All Be Reading Mary Shelley
- Samantha Wilcoxson
- Mar 22
- 5 min read
I recently realized that fellow Sapere author Donna Gowland had written a novel about Mary Shelley. Naturally, I immediately preordered her book and invited her to celebrate Women's History Month with us!
Welcome, Donna!
~ Samantha
Why we should all be reading Mary Shelley: Guest Post by Donna Gowland
Mary Shelley is world famous for writing Frankenstein, but there's so much behind her fascinating story; she was a tenacious and opinionated woman unafraid to advocate for her own rights and those of other women - which is why she was an obvious choice for my literary detective series 'The Mary Shelley Investigations' coming 23rd May 2025 and here are some of the reasons why you should be reading her too!
She had a formidable mother.
... And not just formidable in the sense of being a strong head of the family. Her mother was Mary Wollstonecraft, writer of the seminal feminist work, A Vindication on the Rights of Woman, first published in. Mary senior advocated for a host of female rights including the right to education and the right to participate full in society, having a say in government systems and having the right to enter professions such as medicine, nursing, and business. Mary Wollstonecraft’s book laid the groundwork for future feminism and her seminal ideas continue to have influence today.
Sadly, Mary Shelley never got to know her fantastic mother as she died from puerperal fever eleven days after giving birth to her.
She was a rebellious and curious girl.
Even before Percy Shelley, Mary lived by her own rules, demanding an education in the data when education for women was not a priority. Tensions with her stepmother and illness saw Mary sent to live and be schooled in Scotland with William Baxter and his family in 1812, there she became friends with his daughter Isabel and told fantastical tales, Scotland features heavily in Frankenstein! Always curious and interested, Mary and her father William Godwin attended key scientific and political lectures, including lectures in Bath by Dr Wilkinson on electricity and human reanimation - sparking the first ideas of Frankenstein. Mary was heavily influenced by the scientific ideas of the time, including those of Luigi Galvani, who dissected frogs to prove that an electric spark could make the dead frog’s muscles contract.
Percy Shelley took her on dates to her mother's grave.
Nowadays, you're lucky if you get a panini from a man you meet on Tinder, but Mary's earliest assignations with the poet Percy Shelley were something else. They began secretly meeting at Mary Wollstonecraft’s grace in St Pancras Old Church churchyard where they are alleged to have done everything from reciting poetry to declaring their love for each other and having sexual intercourse. Mary was 16 and Percy was married at 21.
She eloped with a married man at sixteen years old!
When Percy's declarations to kill himself if they couldn't be together were met with no sympathy from William Godwin, they eloped to Paris in July 1815. By the time of their return - broke and exhausted - in September, Mary was carrying an additional passenger, her daughter Clara who would be born prematurely in February 1815 and die in March of the same year.
She suffered tremendous losses.
Life was seldom easy for Mary; Percy Shelley was frequently broke and either on the hunt for money or running away from creditors. Mary spent lots of their time together alone and their union was littered with periods of penury and strife. Before the death of Percy’s grandfather gave them a comfortable annuity, they were so poor they survived on biscuits and bread dumplings! Mary also fell pregnant often but encountered many tragic losses, losing three of her four children in infancy or early adulthood, leaving only one, Percy Florence, to survive to adulthood.
Even losing Percy Shelley in a sailing accident didn't break her!
Mary Shelley was only twenty-five when Percy Shelley drowned in the Gulf of Spezia on July 8th, 1822, at the age of twenty-nine. She recorded her deep despair at his death in the journal she called a “Journal of Sorrow,” marking the date of his death as a turning point “monument to shew that all ended then.”
She kept his heart in a drawer.
After Percy Shelley’s cremation, Mary was given his heart which had reportedly refused to burn, and she kept it in a silk purse in her desk drawer for the rest of her life. It really doesn’t get more gothic than that!
She was a prolific hack for hire.
After her early widowhood, Mary was forced to work to provide for herself and her children and was a regular contributor to magazines such as The Liberal, The London Magazine and The Keepsake writing articles, a travel book and many short stories. She published the posthumous poems of Percy Shelley which sold three hundred copies in June 1824. Mary Shelley also wrote wonderful ghost stories including ‘The Mortal Immortal’ and ‘The Evil Eye.’
There's more to her than Frankenstein.
Although Mary was only twenty-one when she published Frankenstein, it wasn’t her only work of fiction. Mary's fiction encompassed many genres including romances “Lodore” and “Falkner,” apocalyptical fiction “The Last Man” and historical novels “Valperga” and “The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck”; though none reached the critical acclaim and notoriety of Frankenstein, it’s a rich body of work and showcases Mary’s tremendous versatility and range.
For my money, Mary Shelley is the ultimate dinner party guest - she lived a rich and varied life, had a tremendous interest in the world, an unquenchable thirst for learning and a tenacious spirit. She was a truly remarkable woman who I loved learning more about whilst researching my books which re-imagine her as a detective! I happen to think that Mary would have made a fantastic one.
A young aspiring writer finds romance and mystery in Paris! For fans of Mary Shelley, Daphne Du Maurier, Diane Setterfield and Laura Purcell.
A daring adventure or a foolhardy affair…?
1814, London
It isn’t easy being the daughter of the great Mary Wollstonecraft, harder still to navigate life without her. 16-year-old Mary Godwin is desperate for excitement and trapped in a family she feels stifled in, under the watchful, disapproving glare of her stepmother Mary, she is constantly battling for her father’s attention and approval.
So when the young Romantic poet, Percy Shelley, comes blazing into her life, she falls quickly and deeply in love with him. But Percy has plenty of demons. He is already married with a second child on the way, and he turns up to the Godwin family home with a bottle of laudanum, declaring he will end his life if he cannot be with Mary.
William Godwin forbids contact between them, but Mary’s heart aches for the man she believes to be her soulmate. And so she agrees to elope to Paris.
The excitement of the journey soon wears off and they arrive in the city weary, travel-sick and penniless, though luck finally seems to be on their side when they meet a man who offers them money to find his missing wife.
But with Mary becoming increasingly homesick and concerned for her future, will her love affair with Percy be all she had hoped for? Could the search for the missing wife set her on a new course of self-discovery?
Or will her first daring adventure prove to be her downfall…?
THE MISSING WIFE is the first book in the Mary Shelley Investigation series: thrilling Gothic murder mysteries with a tenacious literary heroine working as a female sleuth.
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