Born in Newington Green to Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley was the author of Frankenstein. Shelley scholar Nick Webb discovered the following letter while conducting his researches.

London 13 July

To Percy Florence Shelley at Eton College, Windsor 

My Darling Florence,

Everything has a beginning, if you will forgive my speaking like Sancho Panza, but that beginning must be linked to something that went before. The Hindus gave the world an elephant to support it, but they insist that their elephant stands upon a tortoise. My invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not emanate from the void, but out of chaos. It can give form to dark and shapeless substance, but it cannot bring into being the substance itself.

Thus it was so many years ago in the environs of Geneva that I found myself one evening a devout listener to Shelley and Lord Byron as they discussed the various philosophical doctrines about the principle of life itself. The blazing wood fire died down to embers as the night waned upon their talk, but in my mind there arose, with a vividness beyond the usual bounds of reverie, a fearful vision. I saw, with shut eyes but acute inner vision, a pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. The hideous phantasm of a man, stretched out and cold, who then, on the working of some powerful engine, showed signs of life and stirred with an uneasy, half vital motion.

Thus passed into legend my creation of Frankenstein. The story is known to you and the other boys in college, from whom I expect you to tolerate not one moment of cruelty about the source of your mother's income. Their fathers, having for the most part inherited land, have made nothing, but lived on the sweat of tenants while every Sunday thanking the Almighty that such circumstance is part of His Design. But your dear father wrote verse that will be written across the sky in stars forever.

But it pains me that Frankenstein may be the only novel for which I will be remembered. It is the work of a young woman whose mind was too easily excited by the glassy stillness of a moon-lit lake and the horror of an awakened corpse. My skill in letters had not yet been polished. The Last Man is a work of greater romance and Lodore, if your mother may be so bold as to possess some vanity, shows a craft in story-telling that far exceeds the scribblings of her youth. (Ed. This places the letter after 1835.) And yet, as my publishers reprint Frankenstein for the seventh time, I confess to some affection for my ghastly progeny and wish it to go forth and prosper. It was the offspring of happier days before dear Shelley died (murdered, as I have always suspected, by that loathsome Williams whose wickedness nature obscured by the sudden storm off Livorno) and before Lord Byron succumbed to the vile miasmas of Missolonghi.  Thus was it written at a time when death and grief were words that found no echo in my heart; despite the grim terrors of a waking dream, its pages speak of many a walk and many a lively conversation with those I loved.

And so, dear Florence, I come by a little-trod path to the point of my letter in the hope that it will prove of more interest than the half sovereign enclosed for those luxuries that Eton College, in thrall to the notion that suffering improves the character of boys, may not furnish.

For many years now the publishers have urged me to write another Frankenstein on the grounds that Frankenstein's unholy creation does not die in the end but is borne away upon his ice-raft by the waves and lost in darkness and distance. Were he to live, says my publisher, Mr Harding, an oleaginous creature, were he to live - for he is a thing of unearthly strength - he may return to haunt poor Captain Walton (for Frankenstein himself is dead beyond the ability even of publishers to equivocate). Are there not others, says he, who seek ruin by meddling in those forbidden sciences? Will not your many readers be disappointed if you, now in the maturity of your genius (Harding imagines himself subtle), do not give your admiring readers the benefit of your later thought? Besides, Harding guarantees that such a book would sell many, many copies. 

Long have I resisted such oily blandishments, for I well remember when your father and I first returned from the Continent how we were spurned by so-called society and how Messrs Harding, Hughes and Lackington looked down their moist noses at your mother's juvenile work of fancy. Now I am treated as a respectable matron to whom it is Mr Harding's sacred mission to toady abjectly as often as his business allows. Yet, the idea of coming again to my hideous creation calls out to me. My passion is now tempered by sadness, and my writer's art so much more practised, that now I feel worthy of the idea that possessed me all those years ago by the lake in Switzerland.

My dear boy, I must now abjure you to complete discretion: I have written Frankenstein's Creature Returns. However, the watery, yellow eyes of my most famous creation have haunted me for too long. The monster may see another day, but I will not if this second novel is published while I live. Yet the value of such a story, as the slimy Mr Harding has impressed upon me, cannot be ignored. So I have resolved upon this subterfuge.

Darling Florence, I have longed to leave you something which will set you up in life after I have gone. To that end I have sealed the manuscript of Frankenstein's Creature Returns in several layers of muslin and wax which I then placed in a watertight iron tube made, according to my specification, by Frith, the local blacksmith. This tube I placed secretly during a visit I made to see the school in Stoke Newington where my dear mother taught before she was cut down like a flower bringing me into the world. You know where I mean, dear Florence, for I made a point of showing you the exact spot. With what ill grace you wondered why I found it so interesting. How you chafed about being taken on a pilgrimage to the scenes of your grandmother's life, but now you will understand my purpose. Use it wisely.

You are, I trust, diligently learning your Greek irregular verbs, for I had bad report of your grasp of grammar. My friend, Lord Byron, died for the Greeks so a little application on your part seems not too great an imposition compared to his sacrifice.

Stand for no bullying, and bully nobody in your turn. With great affection. Your loving mother, Mary.