Mary Shelley

British novelist — author of Frankenstein — daughter of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft — wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley — who wrote the founding text of science fiction at age 18 during a ghost story contest.

Creates science fiction — Frankenstein establishes the genre that explores the ethical implications of scientific and technological creation; written at 18 by the daughter of two radical philosophers and the wife of a Romantic poet during a summer with Byron, it is the most consequential first novel in literary history.