Mary Shelley’s London Home Can Be Yours For $1.3 Million

Literary history, with public transit nearby

Mary Shelley
Bodleian curator Stephen Hebron holds a new portrait of Mary Shelley, recently donated to the Bodleian Libraries.
Matt Cardy/Getty Images

Few writers can say that they created works with the staying power of Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein. Over 200 years after it was first published, it continues to be widely read — and continues to inspire new work, from Larry Fessenden’s psychological horror film Depraved to Jeannette Winterson’s distinctively-structured novel Frankissstein. And that’s to say nothing of a recently-rekindled debate over Shelley’s role in the emergence of science fiction.

So if you’re looking to be inspired to change the world — or at least the face of pop culture — perhaps living in Shelley’s old home might do the trick. Conveniently enough, the house that she shared with her husband Percy Shelley in London is now on sale. According to an article at Metro, the apartment is currently on the market for £1 million — or a little over $1.3 million.

The apartment is located on the first floor of a building on Marchmont Street, 15 minutes from St Pancras Old Church. The closest tube station is Russell Square, and King’s Cross isn’t far away.

If you’re really looking to splurge and embrace your inner 19th century writer, you could pick up the onetime homes of both Shelley and Herman Melville — and then write a novel about, say, a mad scientist reanimating the bodies of previously-deceased whales, to the consternation of whalers everywhere.

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