Mary Shelley (1797-1851)
Filed under the name Mary · August 5, 2026
Mary Shelley wrote 'Frankenstein' at eighteen, which is an age most of us spend just trying to figure out rent and which bus to catch, not inventing an entire genre of literature. She'd already lost her mother days after birth, lost a baby of her own, and was living an unconventional, financially uncertain life when she wrote it during that famous rainy summer with a group of poets who, frankly, had more freedom and money than sense. What gets me is that the book itself is about a creator terrified of what he's made and unwilling to take responsibility for it — heavy stuff for a teenager who'd already buried more than most people do by sixty. Two centuries later, 'Frankenstein' is still taught in schools and remade in movies, and science fiction as we know it traces straight back to her. I've got a teenager of my own who thinks eighteen is too young to know anything. Mary Shelley is proof that's not always true.