Mary Shelley’s father influenced her throughout her life. At an early age, because her mother died, her father was left raising her. Mary Godwin received little formal education but her father tutored her in a lot of different subjects. William Godwin would take her and her step-siblings on educational trips and in addition to that, they would have access to his library. Throughout this, they would meet with different people of influence including Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a romantic poet and Aaron Burr, former vice president of the U.S. Mary Shelley is said to have received an unusual and advanced education for a girl of the time. Her father described her at fifteen as "singularly bold, somewhat imperious, and active of mind. Her desire of knowledge is great, and her perseverance in everything she undertakes almost invincible”.
–Gabbi Firrincieli

Mary Shelley’s mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, was a writer who was strongly influenced by Thomas Paine, who was a radical during the 1770s. Mary Wollstonecraft was a feminast who argued that women deserved equal rights. When she moved to London in the late 1780s, she became an admired professional writer and editor who wrote about the rights of women and children. In 1790, Mary Wollstonecraft wrote an essay "A Vindication of the Rights of Men", which was based on her reaction to the French Revolution. That essay influenced her most famous feminist social study that was written two years later, "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman".



-Gabbi Firrincieli

William Godwin

Mary Shelley’s father, William Godwin was a journalist and political philosopher who is said to be the founder of philosophical anarchism. He wrote two famous political science novels during the time when the French Revolution was going on in the 1790s. In his book, An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, written in the 1790s, he argued that the government is a corrupting force in society. Some of the most important things that he wrote were called Political Justice, Caleb Williams and Thoughts on Man.

-Gabbi Firrincieli