The runaway Goth
At 16 she ran away with a married poet; at 21 she wrote Frankenstein, the definitive Gothic novel that spawned a whole new genre. The romance and tragedy of Mary Shelley’s short life are well known, but what do we know of the woman herself? Through letters, diaries and records Fiona Sampson reveals the real woman behind the story. She uncovers a complex, generous character – friend, intellectual, lover and mother – trying to fulfil a passionate commitment to writing when to be a woman writer was an extraordinary and costly anomaly.