Percy Florence Shelley

"Sir Percy Florence Shelley, 3rd Baronet (12 November 1819-5 December 1889) was the son of Percy Bysshe Shelley and Frankenstein author, Mary Shelley. His middle name, Florence, came because he was born in Florence in Italy. Shelley moved back to England with his mother in 1822, his father having drowned off the Italian coast. He joined Harrow School in Middlesex in 1832, and went up to Trinity College, Cambridge in October 1837."

Source-http://www.freebase.com/view/en/percy_florence_shelley

-Sherene Boodram

Percy Bysshe Shelley

"The branch of the Shelley family to which the poet Percy Bysshe belonged traces its pedigree to Henry Shelley of Worminghurst, Sussex, who died in 1623. These Worminghurst or Castle Goring Shelleys are of the same stock as the Michelgrove Shelleys, who trace up to Sir William Shelley, judge of the common pleas under Henry VII,then to a member of parliament in 1415, and to the reign of Edward I, or even to the epoch of the Norman Conquest. The Worminghurst branch was a family of credit, but not of special distinction, until its fortunes culminated under the above-named Sir Bysshe."

Source-http://www.nndb.com/people/854/000024782/

-Sherene Boodram

After Mary Wollstonecraft's death, William Goodwin published several works that she was working on before her death. He published a volume of The Posthumous Works in addition to his own Memoirs of Mary. It was uncommon, but at the end of the book, he wrote about Mary's life, including information about her love affair and betrayal, her daughter's illegitimate birth, her suicide attempts and many other things. Mary Wollstonecraft's death was used to "disprove claims of women's equality".

(Source: http://womenshistory.about.com/od/wollstonecraft/a/experience4.htm)

-Gabbi Firrincieli

Mary Shelley's sister, Claire Clairmont, lived with her and Percy Shelley for a few years becuase of their close relationship. It was said that they were close becuase Claire's 'liveliness and sense of adventure balanced well with Mary's kindness and gentleness'. While travelling together, Mary and Claire learned Latin, Greek, read about history, literature and praticed letter and journal writing. Claire's musical voice inspired poetry from Lord Byron and Percy Shelley. (Source: http://ocw.nd.edu/political-science/mary-wollstonecraft-and-mary-shelley/biographies-1/claire-clairmont)

-Gabbi Firrincieli

Percy Shelley wrote his most ambitious poem in the summer of 1817 called “the Revolt of Islam”. In this poem, the plot centers on two characters that start a revolution during the time of the Ottoman Empire. “This work demonstrated how Shelley had come to a mature insight into the complex relationship between good and evil”. In this work, he identified and aligned himself strongly with the notion of atheism.
Source: http://www.notablebiographies.com/Sc-St/Shelley-Percy.html
-Gabbi Firrincieli

John William Polidori, a friend of Mary Shelley.

"Dr. John Polidori's short story "The Vampyre," first published in New Monthly Magazine in 1819, was the first vampire story in English prose. It inspired a surge of popular interest in vampires, essentially creating the now-familiar image of the vampire as a seducer, an irresistible synthesis of sex and death. Although Polidori is the author of "The Vampyre," the original story idea is not his own. It came about during a gathering of writers, including Lord Byron and Mary Shelley, while Dr. Polidori was serving as Byron's traveling physician. In June of 1816, the authors, trapped inside due to bad weather, challenged each other to write ghost stories. Mary Shelley's story developed into the novel Frankenstein, while Polidori's own fragment became his novel Ernestus Berchtold; or, The Modern Oedipus, published in 1819."

-Sherene Boodram

Source-http://victorian-fiction.suite101.com/article.cfm/the_vampyre_by_john_william_polidori

Mary Wollstonecraf, Mary Shelley's mother.

"At the age of nineteen Mary Wollstonecraf went out to earn her own livelihood. In 1783, she helped her sister Eliza escape a miserable marriage by hiding her from a brutal husband until a legal separation was arranged. The two sisters established a school at Newington Green. Mary Wollstonecraft was a radical in the sense that she desired to bridge the gap between mankind's present circumstances and ultimate perfection. She was truly a child of the French Revolution and saw a new age of reason and benevolence close at hand. Mary undertook the task of helping women to achieve a better life, not only for themselves and for their children, but also for their husbands. Of course, it took more than a century before society began to put her views into effect."

-Sherene Boodram Source-http://www.historyguide.org/intellect/wollstonecraft.html

The story of Frankenstein was started in the summer of 1816. Lord Byron and Mary Shelley’s husband inspired her to write the story. When she was at Eton College, Mary Shelley became interested in Luigi Calvani’s experiments dealing with whether or not electric shocks would make dead frog’s muscles twitch. Byron and Shelley talked about these experiments and with his help, she was able to finish the story within a year. “In her ‘Introduction’, Mary Shelley said that she got the story from a dream in which she saw “the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with a uneasy, half vital motion."” (http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/mshelley.htm) With Lord Byron’s help, she was not only able to push herself to complete the novel but she also was very informed on what she was writing about which is shown by her interest with the electric shocks concerning dead frogs.
-Gabbi Firrincieli

Mary Shelley clearly had Percy ( husband ) on her mind when she wrote Frankenstein. Percy influenced Mary in many way, the death of their son in William in 1819 helped him to write some of his greatest poetry:"Stanzas" Written in Dejection near Naples. In which he poor his emotion out of the death of his son. In one section of the poem he say es "I could lie down like a tired child, and weep away the life of care.In that ex cert i think was trying to let his audience not only read how he felt, but share some of his most intimate feelings that a farther could have.
(SOURCE) www.poetryseeker.org