SHELLEY, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, was the daughter of the distinguished author of Caleb Williams, and the second wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley, and was born in 1798. Her earliest production of any note was her novel of Frankenstein, which was conceived in 1816 when travelling with her husband and Lord Byron among the romantic scenery of Switzerland. It is wild and improbable, yet there are many holds on human interest comprised in
this wonderful story. It was at once pronounced a classic by the novel readers, but time, as it generally does, has slightly reversed this judgment. Frankenstein, however, with all its faults, and they belong much more to conception than construction, was undoubtedly far ahead of the frantic terrors excited by Mrs Radcliffe, or the coarse and horrible delineations in which Maturin delighted to indulge his readers. Mrs Shelley did not again tempt the public for many years with the products of her fantastic genius. Her care for her husband was tender and ceaseless, and she had just published her Valperga, a novel, when the news of his death reached her. She subsequently wrote Falkland, The Last Man, Lodore, and the Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck, but much of her inspiration had flown with the death of Shelley. She likewise wrote a pleasing account of her Rambles in Germany and Italy; and in 1839 she published an edition of her husband's poems, and the following year this was followed up by a selection from his letters, and a few specimens of his prose writings. She died in London on the 1st of February 1851.