The Wicked Duke Takes a Wife

Author’s Note

Frankenstein was published anonymously in 1818 in three volumes (not as a single novel) and became an instant bestseller. Thirteen years later Mary Shelley admitted authorship and confessed to the public that her groundbreaking novel had been conceived one rainy summer in Geneva during a competition against three other novelists to produce the best ghost story.

Mary won, still a teenager, and invented the science-fiction genre. I became fascinated with her life and work over a decade ago while researching a short novel I was writing about a horror novelist.

Mary was sixteen when she ran away with poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. Their marriage was plagued with scandals and personal tragedy and reads nothing like a modern-day romance. Percy drowned in 1822. Mary died of a brain tumor when she was fifty-three.

For errors made and liberties taken, I hope that Mary and my readers will “compassionate” me. If not, let Percy have the last word:

“What!”-Cried he, “this is my reward

For nights of thought, and days of toil?

Do poets, but to be abhorred

By men of whom they never heard,

Consume their spirit’s oil?”

I hope you will be inspired to read Frankenstein if you have not done so, and discover Mary Shelley’s brilliance and her fascinating life as a writer and feminist.

Cheers,

JILLIAN HUNTER