 In June 1812 , her father sent Mary to stay with the Dissenting family of the radical William Baxter , near Dundee , Scotland . To Baxter , he wrote , " I am anxious that she should be brought up ... like a philosopher , even like a cynic . " Scholars have speculated that she may have been sent away for her health , to remove her from the seamy side of business , or to introduce her to radical politics . Mary Godwin revelled in the spacious surroundings of Baxter 's house and in the companionship of his four daughters , and she returned north in the summer of 1813 for a further stay of 10 months . In the 1831 introduction to Frankenstein , she recalled : " I wrote then — but in a most common @-@ place style . It was beneath the trees of the grounds belonging to our house , or on the bleak sides of the <unk> mountains near , that my true compositions , the airy flights of my imagination , were born and fostered . " 
