Mary Shelley was born Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, on August 30, 1797, in London, England. She was the daughter of William Godwin, political theorist, novelist and publisher, and Mary Wollstonecraft, writer and early feminist thinker, who died of puerperal fever 10 days after her daughter's birth. As a child, Mary had little formal education. and was educated by her father, but despite this Mary Godwin received an unusual and advanced education for a girl of the time. For six months in 1811, she also attended a boarding school in Ramsgate, and shortly thereafter was sent to stay with the family of the radical William Baxter, near Dundee, Scotland, in June 1812. Mary Godwin embraced the new, spacious surroundings of the house of Baxter and the company of his four daughters, and she returned n...