Mary Shelley
English · 1797–1851
English novelist, born to philosopher William Godwin and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft. She wrote Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus in 1818 at age 20, during a ghost-story competition with her husband Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron in Switzerland. The novel is widely credited as the first work of science fiction. Her later works include The Last Man and editions of her late husband's poetry.