Most people know of Mary Shelley as the writer of Frankenstein and the wife of the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. However, she was far more than that, and parts of her life were just as dramatic and tragic, if not more so, than her famous gothic novel. Mary's parents were themselves well-known in English society and somewhat notorious. Her father, William Godwin, was a radical theorist on the French Revolution. Her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, was a pioneer of women's rights and her book A Vindication of the Rights of Woman caused considerable reaction at the time. Furthermore, she already had an illegitimate child, Fanny Imlay, and was pregnant with Mary when she married William Godwin