In what year was Mary Shelley born?

Mary Shelley was born in 1797.

She was born Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin on August 30, 1797, in Somers Town, London. Her parents were the philosopher and writer William Godwin and the feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft, who died shortly after Mary’s birth from complications following childbirth.

Mary grew up surrounded by books, political ideas, and literary debate. She later formed a relationship with the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, whom she married in 1816. During a 1816 stay near Lake Geneva, she conceived the idea for Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus.

The novel was first published anonymously in 1818, when Shelley was 20 years old. Its success eventually made her one of the most important figures in Gothic literature and early science fiction. The birth year is sometimes confused with 1798, the year William Godwin published memoirs about Mary Wollstonecraft, but Shelley herself was born in 1797.