Mary Shelley grew up surrounded by unusual people. These family and friends were those who made Shelley's upbringing unique. Her uncommon childhood and young adult years molded her into the creative and impulsive person she was when Frankenstein was scripted in 1817.

Her parents, William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, her husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley, her friends, Claire Clairmont, Lord Byron, and John Pollidori, and her close acquaintances, Harriet Shelley and Fanny Imlay, all influenced Mary Shelley a great deal during this time period.

Typically, a young girl in the early 19th century would not grow up around novelists, poets, and philosophers, have a mother who was a passionate feminist, or a father who was friends with Samuel T. Coleridge. However, Mary Shelley experienced this upbringing.

Click here for biographies of the above friends, family members, and radical influences of Mary Shelley from 1810-1820.