1. Legacies

‘Legacies’ talks about Mary Shelley, who ran away with the poet Percy Shelley and became the author of Frankenstein. Although Mary published eight more books after Frankenstein and more than 50 short stories and essays, most people only know her for her first book. We can see that her writing represents a commitment to social reform and women’s independence. She advocated for the rights of women, like her famous mother, Mary Wollstonecraft. Mary Shelley broke conventions and stretched literary genres to express her radical ideas. She lived as an independent woman during a time when middle-class women were supposed to be wives and mothers, not famous authors.