ibbled; and my favorite pastime,
during the hours given me for recreation, was to 'write stories.' Still
I had a dearer pleasure than this, which was the formation of castles in
the air--the indulging in waking dreams--the following up trains of
thought, which had for their subject the formation of a succession of
imaginary incidents. My dreams were at once more fantastic and agreeable
than my writings. In the latter I was a close imitator--rather doing as
others had done, than putting down the suggestions of my own mind. What
I wrote was intended at least for one other eye--my childhood's
companion and friend; but my dreams were all my own; I accounted for
them to nobody; they were my refuge when annoyed--my dearest pleasure
when free. I lived principally in the country as a girl, and passed a
considerable time in Scotland. I made occasional visits to the more
picturesque parts; but my habitual residence was on the blank and dreary
northern shores of the Tay, near Dundee. Blank and dreary on
retrospection I call them: they were not so to me then. They were the
eyry of freedom, and the pleasant region where unheeded I could commune
with the creatures of my fancy. I wrote then--but in a most common-place
style. It was beneath the trees of the grounds belonging to our house,
or on the bleak sides of the woodless mountains near, that my true
compositions, the airy flights of my imagination, were born and
fostered. I did not make myself the heroine of my tales. Life appeared
to me too common-place an affair as regarded myself. I could not figure
to myself that romantic woes or wonderful events would ever be my lot;
but I was not confined to my own identity, and I could people the hours
with creations far more interesting to me at that age, than my own
sensations."

Her connection with Shelley commenced in 1815, and she gives this
account of the following year, in which she wrote her famous novel,
_Frankenstein_:

"After this my life became busier, and reality stood in place of
fiction. My husband, however, was from the first, very anxious that I
should prove myself worthy of my parentage, and enrol myself on the page
of fame. He was for ever inciting me to obtain literary reputation,
which even on my own part I cared for then, though since I have become
infinitely indifferent to it. At this time he desired that I should
write, not so much with the idea that I could produce any thing worthy
of notice, but that he might him