This innovative study gives a powerfully argued view of Mary Shelley's life and works, using not only her masterpiece, but also The Last Man and other fiction. Drawing on unpublished archival material, Anne Mellor studies the relationships between Mary Shelley, her husband Percy Bysshe Shelley, and other key personalities in her circle. Throughout the book, the ways in which Mary Shelley's life and writings voice a distinct personal philosophy about the bourgeois nuclear family are unfolded. Not just a horror story, Frankenstein is a warning about parents who fail to care for their children, when Shelley's ideal family' is absent, and when scientists refuse to take responsibility for their discoveries. At the same time, she emerges as a critic of the romantic ideology that elevates the creative process above the created product.