In Search of Mary Shelley: The Girl Who Wrote Frankenstein by Fiona Sampson

Pegasus Books, 2018

ISBN-13: 978-1681777528

Available: Hardcover, used paperback, Kindle edition,

We know Mary Shelley as the daughter of revolutionary writers Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin, and muse and wife to the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, who as a teenage girl who wrote Frankenstein, but beyond the anecdote of the challenge to write a ghost story issued one night at the Villa Diodati. But we don’t really KNOW her, beyond the facts of her life.  Somehow, her own life and thoughts have been passed over in favor of her companions, and we have been mostly left with the myth of Frankenstein’s creation, and the many permutations of her novel that have capitalized on it.

In this biography, Fiona Sampson aims to capture the “real” Mary, through her letters, journals, and publications, those of her friends, family, and colleagues, and recreating the context of the time she lived in and how that affected her, from the reading she chose, to the effects of changing climate and the development of electricity.  During the short time she was with Shelley, Mary was pregnant five times. Three of her children died at a young age, and she miscarried a fourth. During the same time period, her half-sister Fanny and Percy’s legitimate wife Harriet both committed suicide.  Intense and intellectual to begin with, Mary dealt with difficult emotions like grief and guilt as well as physical problems while still taking responsibility for the mercurial Shelley’s welfare, and completing and publishing a book. These are the facts of Mary’s life with Shelley, but Mary’s life did not end when Shelley’s did– and throughout her life, she was a survivor. Sampson has taken an unusual and effective approach to her subject, taking a “close-up” of who Mary Shelley was and how she became that person, a young woman who, surrounded by great men, “forced open the space for herself in which to write” and because of that, was later able to establish a literary life of her own.

While not a complete look at the Shelleys and their friends and family, the zoom-in focus on Mary Shelley makes this a worthwhile, and fascinating read. Recommended for adult library collections

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski