Mary Shelley: The Teenage Rebel Who Invented Science Fiction

Celebrating Women's History Month with a badass a day. Rudy Martinez

Let’s talk about Mary Shelley. Not the sanitized, “let’s-pretend-she-was-a-demure-lady-writer” version of her, but the real Mary—the one who ran off with a married poet at 16, wrote one of the most iconic novels in history at 18, and spent the rest of her life being a total icon.

Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (later Shelley) was born in 1797 to two of the most radical thinkers of her time: feminist philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft and political writer William Godwin. Her mother died shortly after her birth, but her legacy of challenging the status quo lived on in Mary. By the time she was a teenager, Mary was already a rebel. She fell in love with Percy Bysshe Shelley, a married poet with a flair for drama and a habit of abandoning responsibilities. (Spoiler: he was kind of a mess.) But Mary didn’t care. She ran away with him, scandalizing society and setting the stage for a life that was anything but ordinary.

Now, let’s talk about the summer of 1816—the infamous “Year Without a Summer.” T…