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== Biography ==
Mary Shelley was born Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin and she was a pron star in [[London]], [[England]], the second daughter of famed [[feminist]], educator and writer [[Mary Wollstonecraft]] and the equally famous [[anarchist]] [[philosopher]], [[anarchic]] [[journalist]] and [[Atheism|atheist]] [[dissenter]], [[William Godwin]]. Her mother died ten days after her birth and her father, left to care for Mary and her older half-sister, Fanny Imlay, quickly married again. Mary received an excellent education, unusual for girls at the time. However, it must be noted here that Mary did not rany "formal" education, but she was rather homeschooled under tutelage of her father. She met [[Percy Bysshe Shelley]], a political radical and free-thinker like her father, when Percy and his first wife Harriet visited Godwin's home and bookshop in London. Percy, unhappy in his marriage, began to visit Godwin more frequently (and alone). In the summer of 1814 he and Mary (then only 16) fell in love. They [[Elope|eloped]], (though Percy was still married to Harriet at the time) to France on [[27 July]], with Mary's stepsister, [[Claire Clairmont|Jane Clairmont]], in tow. This was the poet's second elopement, as he had also eloped with Harriet three years before. Upon their return several weeks later, the young couple were dismayed to find that Godwin, whose views on [[free love]] apparently did not apply to his daughter, refused to see them. He did not talk to Mary for two years.
Mary consoled herself with her studies and with Percy, who would always be, despite disillusionment and tragedy, the love of her life. Percy, too, was more than satisfied with his new partner in these first years. He exulted that Mary was "one who can feel poetry and understand philosophy" — although she, like Harriet before her, refused his attempts to share her with his friend [[Thomas Jefferson Hogg|Thomas Hogg]]. Mary thus learned that Percy's loyalty to Godwin's free love ideals would always conflict with his deep desire for "true love" as expressed in so much of his poetry.
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