Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was the daughter of two of England's most nonconformist thinkers, William Godwin, the radical philosopher, and Mary Wollstonecraft, the author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (also covered in Literature and Its Times). At age seventeen, Mary fell in love with renowned English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and fled with him to Europe. Under the influence of her husband and Lord Byron, Mary's literary talents began to flourish. After Byron issued a challenge for each of the three writers to create a ghost story, Mary began her most famous novel, Frankenstein. It is a product of the Romantic era and deals with several of the Romantic movement's most crucial ideas, including isolation, alienation, and the destruction that can result from man's selfish desires.
The Industrial Revolution in England. In the mid-1700s, Great Britain experienced a surge in population that helped initiate the Industrial Revolution. The population of England in 1700 was 6 million; by 1800 it had climbed to more than 9 million people. Advances in agriculturewhich played the most significant role in the increase in population-provided a greater supply of food and better overall health for the nation's inhabitants.
