Mary Shelley (short story)

Mary Shelley was the eighth in a line of clues in the series known as the #FindTheDoctor mystery released in late 2021.

This clue was derived from an Email from the Doctor Who Newsletter on 2 September 2021 showcasing a plethora of highlighted capitalised letters, in order saying "BHIRLRIATIYBRMASRY", and which if made into an anagram spelled out "BRITISH LIBRARY MARY".

It gave away the letter  A  as the next clue.

Plot
Mary Shelley is an English novelist whose work has reAched all corners of the globe. Author of Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus (1818), Shelley was the daughter of the radical philosopher William Godwin, who described her as ‘singularly bold, somewhat imperious, and active of mind’. Her mother, who died days after her birth, was the famous defender of women's rights, Mary Wollstonecraft. Mary grew up with five semi-related siblings in Godwin’s unconventional but intellectually electric household.

At the age of 16, Mary eloped to Italy with the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, who praised ‘the irresistible wildness & sublimity of her feelings’. Each encouraged the other’s writing, and they married in 1816 after the suicide of Shelley’s wife. They had several children, of whom only one survived.

A ghost-writing contest on a stormy June night in 1816 inspired Frankenstein, often called the first true work of science-fiction. Superficially a Gothic novel, influenced by the experiments of Luigi Galvani, it was concerned with the destructive nature of power when allied to wealth.

Familiar to scholars, librarians and the entire literary world, the novel tells the story of Doctor Victor Frankenstein and a creature he creates in an unorthodox scientific experiment. It was an instant wonder and spawned a mythology all of its own that endures to this day.

After Percy Shelley’s death in 1822, she returned to London and pursued a very successful writing career as a novelist, biographer and travel writer. She also edited and promoted her husband’s poems and other writings.

Further information about the life of Mary Shelley can be found via the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography


 * Name: Mary Shelley
 * Also known as: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (née)
 * Occupation: Novelist
 * Born: 30 August 1797, Somers Town, London, England
 * Died: 1 February 1851, Chester Square, London, England
 * Gender: Female
 * Literary period: Romantic
 * Genre: Gothic, Romantic literature

Story notes

 * The letter  A  in the word reached in the description just below the portrait is in capital.
 * The portrait on the site is credited as "Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley by Richard Rothwell © National Portrait Gallery, London".