Shelley did not receive any formal education, but instead learned to read at home, having access to her father's extensive library. Shelley's relationship with her stepmother was strained from the beginning for several reasons, such as Shelley's intense feelings for her father, her idolization of her dead mother, and Clairmont's preference for her own children over Shelley and her half sister. In 1801 Godwin married a widow named Mary Jane Clairmont. This later became a major theme in her work, particularly in Mathilda (1959 believed to have been written c. Godwin, a novelist and political philosopher, was by all accounts an undemonstrative and self-absorbed intellectual, but Shelley's attachment to him was powerful. Wollstonecraft, an outspoken advocate for women's rights, died shortly after Shelley's birth, leaving Shelley in the care of her father. Shelley was born August 30, 1797, to two of the foremost intellectuals of the eighteenth century. The most famous assessment of Shelley comes from the poet Leigh Hunt, who called Shelley 'four-fam'd,' referring to her parents, her husband-poet Percy Bysshe Shelley-and the monstrous creature she created.

Such scholars claim that Frankenstein acts as a manifestation of Shelley's own feelings about motherhood and her role as a wife as well as an early attempt to articulate a feminist position. Feminist critics have argued that the novel explores a range of themes, including the repression of women, childbirth and parental responsibility, and gender roles at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Though Shelley produced a variety of works throughout her career-including novels, short stories, and essays-the bulk of critical scholarship has focused on Frankenstein. The story of a scientist who attempts to bring life to a dead body, Frankenstein has become one of the most iconic and recognizable novels of the past two centuries. The daughter of noted authors Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin, Shelley became widely known as a literary talent of her own right with the 1818 publication of Frankenstein or, the Modern Prometheus. MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT SHELLEY: INTRODUCTION

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