See Also: Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft(dictionary)
Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft(encyclopedia)
SHELLEY' S CASE(law)
SHELLEY'S CASE(law)
Shelley, Percy Bysshe(dictionary)
Shelley, Percy Bysshe(encyclopedia)
Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary(dictionary)
Amman(encyclopedia)
Amman(dictionary)
Amman(tourism)

Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft (sh) and Amman (sh)


Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft (sh)




orig. Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin

born Aug. 30, 1797, London, Eng.
died Feb. 1, 1851, London

English Romantic novelist.

The only daughter of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, she met and eloped with Percy B. Shelley in 1814. They married in 1816 after his first wife committed suicide. Mary Shelley's best-known work is Frankenstein (1818), a narrative of the dreadful consequences of a scientist's artificially creating a human being. After her husband's death in 1822, she devoted herself to publicizing his writings and educating their son. Of her several Other novels, the best, The Last Man (1826), is an account of the future destruction of the human race by a plague.


Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, detail of an oil painting by Richard Rothwell, first exhibited 1840; ...

Courtesy of The National Portrait Gallery, London


Amman (sh)




City (pop., 1994: 969,598), capital of Jordan.

It lies 25 mi (40 km) northeast of the Dead Sea. Amman is by far the largest city of Jordan. Fortified settlements have existed in the area from remote antiquity; the earliest date from the Chalcolithic Period (งใ 4000-3000 BC). As Rabbah, it became the capital of the Ammonites. It was conquered by Egypt's Ptolemy II (Ptolemy Philadelphus), who renamed it Philadelphia, a name it retained through Roman times. Taken by the Arabs in AD 635, it later went into decline and subsequently disappeared. In 1878 the Ottoman Empire resettled it. When the British established the country of Transjordan in 1921, Amman became its capital. Its modern development was furthered by Transjordanian independence in 1946. Along with the rest of Jordan (the country's name from 1950), Amman has had to absorb a large number of Arab refugees that fled Palestine during the Arab-Israeli wars.