Author Guide · Lisanne Swart
Books Written by Mary Shelley
Mary Shelley wrote her first novel at eighteen, on a wet summer holiday in Geneva where a ghost-story competition with Byron and her future husband turned into something none of them expected. She spent the rest of her career trying to write her way out from under it, and mostly failed, not because the later novels were weaker but because Frankenstein had already invented a myth too large for any follow-up to match. Her range across seven novels is wider than her reputation suggests: a historical epic set in medieval Italy, an apocalyptic plague narrative a century ahead of its time, a Tudor pretender’s romance, and two quieter domestic novels written in her final decade. Below is her complete bibliography, in order.
By Lisanne Swart · 7 books · 1818–1837 · Updated July 2026
Where to start
Her most famous and most important work
Frankenstein (1818) — written at eighteen, and still argued about as one of the first true works of science fiction.
If Frankenstein is the only one you’ve read
The Last Man (1826) — her second-most-studied novel, and the one that shows what else she could do.
Frankenstein; or, The Modern PrometheusStart here
Victor Frankenstein, a young scientist obsessed with conquering death, assembles and animates a creature from salvaged body parts, then abandons it in horror at what he has made. The creature, articulate and desperate for companionship, turns to revenge when every attempt at connection is met with disgust. Published anonymously when Shelley was twenty, it is now widely credited as one of the first true works of science fiction.
Mathilda
A short, confessional novella about a young woman whose father confesses an incestuous love for her shortly before taking his own life, leaving her to carry the secret and the grief alone. Shelley’s own father, William Godwin, was so disturbed by the manuscript that he refused to return it to her, and it remained unpublished until 1959, more than a century after her death.
Valperga; or, The Life and Adventures of Castruccio, Prince of Lucca
Set in fourteenth-century Italy, this historical novel follows the real condottiere Castruccio Castracani as ambition and political ruthlessness gradually corrode the idealistic young man he once was, seen largely through the eyes of the two women who love him. Shelley researched it in Italian archives and used it to argue, through fiction, against the Romantic cult of the great man that her own circle tended to celebrate.
The Last Man
Set in a late-twenty-first-century England, this apocalyptic novel follows Lionel Verney as a global plague slowly extinguishes humanity, leaving him the last person alive on Earth. Several major characters are thinly veiled portraits of Shelley’s own circle, including Percy Shelley and Lord Byron, both dead by the time the novel appeared. It was dismissed by contemporary critics and largely forgotten until a scholarly revival beginning in the 1960s established it as an early landmark of apocalyptic fiction.
The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck
A historical novel built around the real Perkin Warbeck, a pretender who claimed to be Richard, Duke of York, one of the two young princes believed murdered in the Tower of London, and who spent years pressing his claim to the English throne under Henry VII. Shelley treats Warbeck sympathetically as a genuine believer in his own cause rather than a simple fraud, using his story to continue the critique of political ambition she had begun in Valperga.
Lodore
After Lord Lodore is killed in a duel, his widow Ethel must navigate poverty, an unwanted reunion with her estranged mother, and the difficulty of building an independent life for herself and her daughter. Quieter and more domestic than Shelley’s earlier work, it reflects the financial precarity she herself lived with for years as a widow raising a young son.
Falkner
Shelley’s final novel follows Elizabeth Raby, orphaned as a child and raised by the guilt-ridden Rupert Falkner, who is eventually put on trial for a death connected to his past. The novel centres on Elizabeth’s fierce loyalty to her adoptive father and her refusal to abandon him even once his darkest secret comes out, closing Shelley’s fiction career on the theme of loyalty tested by hidden guilt that runs through much of her work.
Frequently asked questions about Mary Shelley’s books
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Author Index
Every Author Guide, A–Z
The full alphabetical directory, if you want to keep browsing.
