Mary Shelley

popular name: Mary Shelley

date_of_death: February 1, 1851

age: 53

cause_of_death: Brain tumor

claim_to_fame: Writers and Poets

best_know_for: Mary Shelley (1797–1851) was an English novelist, best known for writing Frankenstein, one of the most influential works in the horror genre. She was born Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, the daughter of the feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft and philosopher William Godwin. Her mother died only 11 days after her birth, leaving her with a strong intellectual legacy and a challenging childhood. In 1814, at the age of 16, Mary began a romantic relationship with the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, who was already married. Despite societal taboos, they eloped to France in 1816, where they faced personal hardships, including the death of their first child. That same year, during a summer spent with Lord Byron at Lake Geneva, she conceived the idea for Frankenstein, which was published in 1818 when she was just 20. Percy Shelley died in 1822 in a drowning accident, leaving Mary a widow with a young son. She continued to write and publish, but struggled financially and emotionally. She wrote novels, short stories, travelogues, and biographies, though none gained the lasting fame of Frankenstein. She also edited and promoted Percy’s works. Mary Shelley died on February 1, 1851, from a brain tumor at the age of 53. She left behind a legacy as a pioneering figure in Gothic literature and a trailblazer for women in literature, particularly through her groundbreaking work with Frankenstein, which explored themes of creation, responsibility, and the human condition. She was laid to rest at St. Peter's Church in Bournemouth UK.

popular name: Emily Dickinson

date_of_death: May 15, 1886

age: 55

cause_of_death: Heart failure induced by severe hypertension

claim_to_fame: Writers and Poets

best_know_for: Emily Dickinson is one of America’s greatest and most original poets of all time. She took definition as her province and challenged the existing definitions of poetry and the poet’s work. Like writers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Walt Whitman, she experimented with expression in order to free it from conventional restraints. Like writers such as Charlotte Brontë and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, she crafted a new type of persona for the first person. A lyric poet who lived in seclusion and commanded a singular brilliance of style and integrity of vision, together with Walt Whitman Dickinson is widely considered to be one of the two leading 19th-century American poets.

popular name: Jean-Paul Sartre

date_of_death: April 15, 1980

age: 74

cause_of_death: Pulmonary edema

claim_to_fame: Writers and Poets

best_know_for: Jean-Paul Sartre was a French philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, sexual predator and literary critic, considered a leading figure in 20th-century French philosophy and Marxism. Sartre was one of the key figures in the philosophy of existentialism (and phenomenology). His work has influenced sociology, critical theory, post-colonial theory, and literary studies. He was awarded the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature despite attempting to refuse it. Major philosophical works include Being and Nothingness (1943) where he explored human consciousness, freedom, and "bad faith" and Existentialism is a Humanism (1946), a public lecture defending existentialism. Sartre's best known literary works include Nausea (1938), a novel expressing existential dread and No Exit (1944), famous for the line "Hell is other people." Upon his passing the grave of Jean-Paul Sartre at Cimetière du Montparnasse is a top tourist attraction. His legacy ... not so much.