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The creator of one of the greatest horror stories of all time was an English lady. Mary Godwin (1797-1851), was the daughter of the great feminist author Mary Wollenscroft and the political philosopher William Goodwin. When she was 16 she began an affair with the English poet Percy Bysshe Shelly. Her father disapproved of the affair and the young lovers eloped to France. While visiting Lord Byron near Lake Geneva, Mary, conceived of the idea for her most famous creation. The idea for the story came to her as she and some friends were having a competition, as to who could write the scariest ghost story. She won the competition and began to turn her idea into, first a short story and then a novel.

While visiting Lord Byron near Lake Geneva, Mary, conceived of the idea for her most famous creation. The idea for the story came to her as she and some friends were having a competition, as to who could write the scariest ghost story. She won the competition and began to turn her idea into, first a short story and then a novel.  Mary developed the idea when she was only 18 years old.Her future husband, Shelley, is believed to have given her advice on the plot and the novel’s development. The novel, <i>Frankenstein, the Modern Prometheus </i> was published in 1818 to great acclaim. Mary married Shelly in 1816. After several years of marriage , her husband drowned, which left her devastated.  She lived her remaining years, caring for her son with the great poet and continued to write novels. Her later works were not well received at the time, but in recent decades there has been a reappraisal of her later novels such as <i>The Last Man</i>. Mary continued to mourn her husband until her death and never remarried.