AWARD-WINNING FOR THE SLIGHTLY FOXED BEST FIRST BIOGRAPHY AWARD 2018

Mary Shelley was brought up by her father in a home filled with radical thinkers, poets, philosophers, and writers of the time. At the age of 16, she eloped with Percy Bysshe Shelley, beginning a relationship that lived on the move all over Britain and Europe, facing debts, infidelity, and the death of three children, before her premature widowhood radically changed her life. Most remarkable is that while still a teenager, Mary composed her classic novel, Frankenstein, creating two of the most enduring archetypes of our time.

Her life is well known. But who was the woman who lived it? Fiona Sampson, through a compelling dialogue with the past, examines letters, diaries, and records to find the real woman behind the story. She reveals a complex and generous character—friend, intellectual, lover, and mother—who strives to fulfill her own passionate commitment to writing, in an era when being a female writer was an extraordinary and laborious anomaly.

Published for the 200th anniversary of Frankenstein's publication, this is an important new work of biography from an award-winning writer and poet.