About Percy Bysshe Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) was one of the most iconic literary figures of the early Romantic movement. Like his great contemporary Lord Byron, Shelley was a true Romantic: passionate and impetuous in love, suspicious of authority and scornful of the niceties of polite society. His work covers a wide range, including verse dramas, poetry and prose writings on a variety of subjects. Shelley’s second wife, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797–1851), whom he married in 1816, was a distinguished novelist in her own right. Following Shelley’s untimely death in 1822, she collected, edited and arranged for the publication of Shelley’s unpublished works.
About Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797) was a moral and political theorist who challenged women’s conditions in eighteenth century England. She not only made a powerful case for liberating and educating women, she also lived out her theories and refused to cave to patriarchal pressure; passionate and forthright, her A Vindication of the Rights of Women was a great feminist treatise that paved the way for social reform in the nineteenth century. Wollstonecraft married William Godwin, a fellow radical, after becoming pregnant with his child. She died just ten days after giving birth to their daughter, who would grow up to be Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein.