Q 01/05

Which two radical writers were the future author of Frankenstein's parents?

A) Wollstonecraft and Coleridge

B) Clairmont and Godwin

C) Wollstonecraft and Godwin

D) Imlay and Wollstonecraft

Answer · why

C) Wollstonecraft and Godwin

Her mother wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Woman; her father was the anarchist philosopher of Political Justice.

Q 02/05

How soon after Mary's birth did her mother die?

A) The same day

B) Six weeks

C) A year

D) 11 days

Answer · why

D) 11 days

The cause was puerperal fever; Godwin's frank memoir of his wife the next year scandalised readers.

Q 03/05

In which part of London was Mary born in 1797?

A) Hampstead

B) Bloomsbury

C) Somers Town

D) Chelsea

Answer · why

C) Somers Town

She would later lodge there again with Percy after their elopement.

Q 04/05

Whom did William Godwin marry in 1801, giving his daughter a stepmother she 'came to detest'?

A) Mrs Clairmont, a widowed neighbour

B) Louisa Jones, his housekeeper

C) Harriet Westbrook, a pupil

D) Isabel Baxter, a Scottish radical

Answer · why

A) Mrs Clairmont, a widowed neighbour

Godwin's friends thought her quick-tempered, but the marriage was a success; her daughter Claire became Mary's stepsister.

Q 05/05

Which two famous visitors to her father's house did the young Mary have access to?

A) William Wordsworth and Thomas Jefferson

B) John Keats and Benjamin Franklin

C) Lord Byron and Napoleon Bonaparte

D) Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Aaron Burr

Answer · why

D) Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Aaron Burr

Godwin gave her a governess, a daily tutor and the run of his library.