Mary Shelley (1797-1851) was the daughter of author and women's rights advocate Mary Wollstonecraft and political philosopher William Godwin. She was the spouse of Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and worked diligently to support his work after his death. Although Mary Shelley's novels, short stories and travelogues have drawn interest in recent years, she remains best known as the creator of Frankenstein, an enduring novel that has provided generations of readers with plentiful thrills while provoking thought and a steady stream of re-interpretations.