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[stonescraft]

May 1816, Cologny

This is the hour. Every night she dies, her daughter. She discovers it only in the morning, though she saw her lying there in the night, so quiet, head full of sleep. But she knows it must have happened at this hour, the witching hour, because that is when she always wakes up.

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Mary Shelley, nee Wollstonecraft Godwin, b. 1797

Daughter of the philosopher and writer Mary Wollstonecraft and the philosopher and writer William Godwin, lover of Percy Shelley, mother of William.

Haunted by an unnamed daughter and her first love, Isabella.

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Mary S. is a fictionalised depiction of the author Mary Shelley from the book Mary and The Birth of Frankenstein by Anne Eekhout.

In the book, Mary is plagued with visions of hauntings in her upbringing — first by a daughter she had not met, then by non-memories of Isabella Baxter, the daughter of a family friend with whom she will have a brief but intense infatuation at seventeen.

Mary meets Percy S. not long after Isabella succumbs to greater sickness; Mary leaves with him as his lover. After becoming pregnant and losing her first child, Percy takes Mary on a trip to Geneva, presenting themselves as husband and wife to Lord Byron and his peers. While staying with Lord Byron, Mary finds herself troubled by both hauntings and human terrors, both of which she exorcises in a game of storytelling one stormy night.

Mary and The Birth of Frankenstein is a work of fiction. While the book references actual events in the author's life, the character Mary S. does not accurately or authentically represent Mary Shelley, nor claims to do so.