 Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley ( née Godwin ; 30 August 1797 – 1 February 1851 ) was an English novelist , short story writer , dramatist , essayist , biographer , and travel writer , best known for her Gothic novel Frankenstein : or , The Modern Prometheus ( 1818 ) . She also edited and promoted the works of her husband , the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley . Her father was the political philosopher William Godwin , and her mother was the philosopher and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft . 
