A Cyclopaedia of Female Biography/Shelley, Mary Wolstonecraft
SHELLEY, MARY WOLSTONECRAFT,
Daughter of William Godwin and Mary Wolstonecraft, was born in London, August, 1797. Her mother dying at her birth, the daughter was tenderly and carefully brought up by her father and step-mother. The little girl soon evinced traits of the hereditary genius which was afterwards so fully developed.
In the introduction to one of her novels, she herself says of her youth:
"It is not singular that, as the daughter of two persons of distinguished literary celebrity, I should very early in life have thought of writing. As a child I scribbled; and my favourite pastime during the hours given me for recreation, was to 'write stories.' Still, I had a dearer pleasure than this, which was the formation of castles in the air; the indulging in waking dreams; the following up trains of thought, which had for their subject the formation of a succession of imaginary incidents. My dreams were at once more fantastic and agreeable than my writings. In the latter I was a close imitator; rather doing as others had done, than putting down the suggestions of my own mind. What I wrote was intended at least for one other eye—my childhood's companion and friend; but my dreams were all my own; I accounted for them to nobody; they were my refuge when annoyed, my dearest pleasure when free. I lived principally in the country as a girl, and passed a considerable time in Scotland. I made occasional visits to the more picturesque parts, but my habitual residence was on the blank and dreary northern shores of the Tay, near Dundee. Blank and dreary on retrospection I call them; they were not so to me then. They were the eyry of freedom, and the pleasant region where unheeded I could commune with the creatures of my fancy, I wrote then, but in a most commonplace style. It was beneath the grounds belonging to our house, or on the bleak sides of the woodless mountains near, that my true compositions, the airy flights of my imagination, were born and fostered. I did not make myself the heroine of my tales. Life appeared to me too commonplace an affair as regarded myself. 1 could not figure to myself that romantic woes or wonderful events would be my lot; but I was not confined to my own identity, and I could people the hours with creations far more interesting to me at that age than my own sensations."
Here is the key of the true womanly character, disinterestedness. This young girl did not weave the garland or create the Utopia for herself, but for others. The mind of a boy works differently; he places himself in the centre of his creations, and wins the laurel for his own brow.
In 1815, Miss Wolstonecraft was married to Percy Bysshe Shelley, whose name at once moves the admiration, the pity, and the censure of the world. That Mrs. Shelley loved her husband with a truth and devotion seldom exceeded, has been proven by her whole career. Their married life was eminently happy, and the fidelity with which she devoted her fine genius to the elucidation of his writings and the defence of his character, is the best eulogium that has been offered to his memory.
In the summer of 1816, Lord Byron and Mr. and Mrs. Shelley were residing on the banks of the Lake of Geneva. They were in habits of daily intercourse, and when the weather did not allow of their boating excursions on the lake, the Shelleys often passed their evenings with Byron at his house at Diodati, "During a week of rain at this time," says Mr. Moore, "having amused themselves with reading German ghost-stories, they agreed at last to write something in imitation of them. 'You and I,' said Lord Byron to Mrs. Shelley, 'will publish ours together.' He then began his tale of the 'Vampire;' and having the whole arranged in his head, repeated to them a sketch of the story one evening, but from the narrative being in prose, made but little progress in filling up his outline. The most memorable result, indeed, of their story-telling was Mrs. Shelley's wild and powerful romance of 'Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus,' one of those original conceptions that take hold of the public mind at once and for ever"
"Frankenstein" was published in 1817, and was instantly recognized as worthy of Godwin's daughter and Shelley's wife, and as in fact, possessing some of the genius and peculiarities of both. It is formed on the model of St. Leon; but the supernatural power of that romantic visionary produces nothing so striking or awful as the grand conception of "Frankenstein," the discovery that he can, by his study of natural philosophy, create a living 'and sentient being.
In 1817, Shelley and his wife returned to England, and spent several month's in Buckinghamshire. In 1818, they returned to Italy; their eldest child died in Rome; the parents then retired to Leghorn for a few months, and after travelling to various places, finally, in 1820, took up their residence at Pisa. In July, 1821, Shelley's death occurred he was drowned in the Gulf of Lerici.
Mrs. Shelley had one son who survived his father; with her children she returned to England, and for year a supported herself by her writings. In 1844, her son, Henry Florence Shelley, succeeded to the title and estates of his grandfather.
Mrs. Shelley's second work of fiction, "Walpurga," was published in 1823. Her other novels are "Lodore," "Perkin Warbeck," "Falkner," and "The Last Man." She wrote a "Journal of her Travels in Italy and Germany;" also "Lives of Eminent French Poets." But her last work, "Memoirs of Shelley," prefixed to the complete edition of his Poems and Letters, displays her character in its loveliest light. She is the guardian angel of her dead husband's fame, as she was of his happiness while he lived. Mrs. Shelley is a woman of original genius; "like her father, she excels in mental analysis," says Mr. Chambers, commenting on "Frankenstein," "and in the conceptions of the grand and the powerful, but fails in the management of her fable, where probable incidents and familiar life are required or attempted." But in "Lodore" she has shown her power to depict scenes true to nature. Mrs. Shelley died in London, February 1st., 1851, in the fifty-third year of her age.