Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein, celebrated on Frankenstein Day

writersAug 30, 2026291,669

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was born August 30, 1797, and readers and critics mark the date as Frankenstein Day to celebrate her work and legacy. Shelley published Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus in 1818 and later wrote the 1826 novel The Last Man, a pandemic story whose narrator Lionel Verney is widely read as a psychological self-portrait and whose action culminates in the year 2092. The Last Man grew out of the bleakest period of Shelley’s life after the deaths of three of her children and the 1822 drowning of Percy Bysshe Shelley; she spent decades editing and promoting his poetry after his death. Commentary this year draws both on Shelley’s moral voice, “There is but one solution to the intricate riddle of life; to improve ourselves, and contribute to the happiness of others”, and on fresh media work: Crooked Marquee highlights three recent film variations that, the outlet argues, finally capture the passionate feminist perspective Shelley embodied. Observers point to The Last Man’s pandemic meditation on why to live and to Frankenstein’s long influence on science fiction and feminist readings of technology and creation. Frankenstein Day prompts renewed attention to Shelley’s prose, her influence on Romantic and later literature, and contemporary retellings that foreground her feminist concerns.

Abigail Larson

@abigaillarson.com

Happy Birthday, Mary Shelley! Born on this day in 1797 🫀

Digital illustration by Abigail Larson depicting a stylized portrait of Mary Shelley

11484h ago

M. Belanger3

Mary to Percy (probably): I will hold your heart close until my death -literally- (I love the little detail of the human heart here because if you know, you know)

Rue2

QUEEN OF GOTH BADDIES, NO ONE DOING IT LIKE HER

Jaime Narnia Christley1

Evan Rachel Wood was so locked in as MS youtu.be/zPBv9SGgwho?...

A Nobody with No Name1

Happiest Birthday to the woman who reinvented science fiction. Inspiring writers, artists, & goths for generations. Who despite her grief, being surrounded by misogyny, & everything else made something truly remarkable. And refused to compromise her work that continues to inspire.

Admirable Women

@admirablewomen.bsky.social

English novelist, poet & essayist Mary Shelley was born #OTD in 1797. Daughter of famed philosopher & feminist, Mary Wollstonecraft, Shelley is best known for her 1818 Gothic novel "Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus." www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/mary-w... #LitSky #BookSky #gothic

A dramatic, artistic composite portrait of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797–1851), the English novelist best known as the author of Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818). The image overlays a classic 19th-century oil painting-style depiction of Shelley—shown in a three-quarter view with pale skin, dark curly hair parted in the center and falling softly around her face, large expressive brown eyes gazing directly and thoughtfully at the viewer, and wearing a low-cut black off-the-shoulder gown typical of Regency-era fashion—onto a dark, textured background filled with layers of translucent, handwritten manuscript text in faded ink. The overlaid script appears to be excerpts from Frankenstein (or closely related drafts), featuring Mary Shelley’s own elegant, flowing cursive handwriting with crossed-out words, revisions, and phrases such as “the wretched phantom,” “catastrophe,” “limbs,” “rain,” “window,” “features,” “great God,” “skin scarcely covered,” “work of muscles and arteries,” and other evocative fragments describing the Creature’s creation and appearance. The text swirls and overlaps around her face and shoulders like ghostly memories or the very pages of her groundbreaking novel coming to life, creating a haunting, literary effect that symbolizes how her personal experiences, intellectual circle (including Percy Shelley and Lord Byron), and the famous 1816 ghost-story contest at Villa Diodati inspired one of literature’s most enduring and influential works on creation, responsibility, isolation, and the ethics of science.

989h ago

jordan

@jordantyranny.bsky.social

“I shall thus give a general answer to the question, so frequently asked me—”How I, then a young girl, came to think of, and to dilate upon, so very hideous an idea?” Writes Mary Shelley in her introduction to the third edition of Frankenstein,1831.

988h ago

jordan26

In the end, at every end, all any of us have left is Hume's guillotine: "What ought to be cannot be deduced from what is."

jordan14

I couldn’t write plot or dialogue so I depended on anecdotes. Mary Shelley was nineteen when she published the first edition of Frankenstein in 1818. “The corpse, seen without God and outside of science, is the utmost of abjection. It is death infecting life. Abject.” ― Julia Kristeva, 1980

jordan12

Linnaeus created a wastebasket taxon “monstrosus” for “wild and monstrous humans, unknown groups, and more or less abnormal people. States Aristotle, we laugh at inferior or ugly individuals, because we feel a joy at being superior to them.

jordan10

In living tissue, grey matter actually has a very light grey colour with yellowish or pinkish hues, which come from capillary blood vessels and neuronal cell bodies. What is the solution to human weather? The pinker parts of each absence? Palms, forehead, chin, knee, ankle.

Simon Spanton

@simonguy.bsky.social

"Remember that I have power; you believe yourself miserable, but I can make you so wretched that the light of day will be hateful to you. You are my creator, but I am your master;—obey!" Happy birthday, Mary Shelley.

A photo of a copy of the 1961 Everyman paperback edition of Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. The cover is by James Boswell.

295h ago

M. Belanger

@sethanikeem.bsky.social

Happy birthday to Mary Shelley whose idea of taking her boyfriends home to meet her mom was having sex with them on top of her mother’s grave Goth AF before we could even fully appreciate the term

315h ago

Science Magazine

@science.org

This cover illustration reimagines the monster first conjured in Frankenstein, Mary Shelley's 1818 novel. On #FrankensteinDay, learn more about the story's lasting legacy on the scientific enterprise, which was investigated in a 2018 issue of Science: https://scim.ag/3UPzBH7

The cover illustration reimagines the monster first conjured in Mary Shelley's 1818 novel.

324h ago

J.A.Tallon

@tallon.bsky.social

Mary Shelley (with scenes from the film "Santo Vs. Frankenstein's Daughter", inspired by Mary Shelley's novel "Frankenstein") - BOTD

216h ago

Gaijin Rando

@gaijinrando.bsky.social

Images from films inspired by the 1818 novel Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley - BOTD in 1797 Jesse James vs. Frankenstein's Daughter (1966) Mad Monster Party? (1967) The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) Runaway Brain (1995)

Jesse James vs. Frankenstein's Daughter (1966)

196h ago

Steve Morrison

@chopper32.bsky.social

"It's an amusing tale, Mary Shelley, but who will remember it in a few years?" #GirlsOwnCC

256h ago

Association for Scottish Literature

@asls.org.uk

“…my habitual residence was on the blank and dreary northern shores of the Tay, near Dundee…” @profdanielcook.bsky.social examines why Scotland mattered so much to Mary Shelley, & considers her position in the Scottish #Gothic tradition #FrankensteinDay #Frankenstein 💙📚 www.nls.uk/papercut/mar...

139h ago

SF Encyclopedia

@sfencyclopedia.bsky.social

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/shelle... was born on this day, so here are some of her book covers (Artist: Celestino Piatti, Daniel Sauer, [couldn't identify] and Noel Fisher):

The cover to Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's "Frankenstein oder Der neue Prometheus"

133h ago

Phineas

@phineas.bsky.social

Lord Byron, and Percy and Mary Shelley are all involved in the Luddite history I've been reading. Mary's parents, William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, were both radical agitators writing about economic and political equality and getting in trouble about it.

177h ago

Stephen G. Rae

@stephengrae.bsky.social

"Of what a strange nature is knowledge! It clings to a mind when it has once seized on it like a lichen on a rock" Mary Shelley, author of the Gothic masterpiece Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus #botd 1797 #FrankensteinDay