Birth of Mary Shelley

Mary Shelley was born on 30 August 1797 in Somers Town. An English novelist and the author of Frankenstein, Shelley began the story as a teenager during a wet summer by Lake Geneva in the company of Lord Byron and her future husband, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. The book, first published anonymously, is often regarded as an early landmark of science fiction and a classic reflection on scientific ambition and responsibility. She was the daughter of the philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft and the political writer William Godwin. She went on to write further novels, including The Last Man, as well as travel writing and biographies, and she edited her husband's poems after his death.

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