Mary Wollstonecraft dies from an infection caused by improper postdelivery medical treatment soon after Mary Shelley's birth. Godwin taught Mary to read and spell her name by having her trace her mother's inscription on the stone. At the age of sixteen Mary ran away to live with the twenty-one year old Percy Shelley, who was already married to Harriet Westbrook.
She conceived of Frankenstein during on the most famous house parties in literary history when staying at Lake Geneva in Switzerland with Byron and Shelley. She was only nineteen at the time. Her life at the time was series of calamities when she wrote this novel. The worst of these were the suicides of her half-sister, Fanny Imaly, and Shelley's wife, Harriet when she was found drowned with her unidentified lover's premature baby.
In 1816, after the suicides, Mary and Shelley, married at London. Fierce public hostility toward the couple drove them to Italy. They were happy in Italy, but their two young children (Clara Everina and William). Nevertheless, Shelley empowered Mary to live as the most desired: to enjoy intellectual and artistic growth, love, and freedom.
When Mary was only twenty-four Percy drowned, leaving her penniless with a two year old son.
She eventually came to more traditional views of women's dependence and differences, like her mother before her. This not a reflection of her courage and integrity but derived from socialization and the "punishments" placed on her by society.
Mary became an invalid at the age of forty-eight. She died in London
from a brain tumor at age of 53. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley is buried
between her mother and father in St. Peter's Churchyard, Bournemouth. She
died in 1851 with poetic timing. The
Great Exhibition, which was a showcase of technological progress, was
opened. This was the same scientific technology that she had warned against
in her most famous book, Frankenstein.