Mary Shelley and the Rights of the Child: Political Philosophy in FrankensteinFrom her youth, Mary Shelley immersed herself in the social contract tradition, particularly the educational and political theories of John Locke and Jean Jacques Rousseau, as well as the radical philosophies of her parents, the feminist Mary Wollstonecraft and the anarchist William Godwin. Against this background, Shelley wrote Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus, first published in 1818. In the two centuries since, her masterpiece has been