Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (30 August 1797 - 1 February 1851) was an English romantic/gothic novelist and the author of Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus. She was married to the Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley.Mary Shelley was born Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin in Somers Town, in London, in 1797. She was the second daughter of famed feminist, philosopher, educator, and writer Mary Wollstonecraft. Her father was the equally famous anarchist philosopher, novelist, journalist, and atheist dissenter William Godwin. Her mother died of puerperal fever ten days after Mary was born.