Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus. … A New Edition.

Mary Shelley’s father-in-law, Sir Timothy Shelley, initially refused to provide child support for her newly fatherless son, Percy Florence, unless she gave up custody. When her father, William Godwin, learned of the conditions, he wrote to her expressing his disgust with Sir Timothy’s “vile proposition,” which he knew she could never accept. Months later, spurred by the success of Presumption!, Godwin arranged for a second edition of Frankenstein to be published, with the entirety of the profits going to his daughter. It was the first time that “Wollstonecraft”—the surname of her famous mother and William Godwin’s beloved first wife—appeared in her name on a title page. Fittingly, her mother was the author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.