Mary Shelley

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Standard Name: Shelley, Mary
Birth Name: Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin
Married Name: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Pseudonym: Mary S.
Pseudonym: Mrs Caroline Barnard
MS , long known almost exclusively for Frankenstein, is now being read for her later novels and her plays, as well as for her journals and letters. Her editing, reviewing, biographical, and journalistic work entitle her to the designation woman of letters. She is an important figure among women Romantics, and a channel for the reformist ideals of the 1790s forwards into the Victorian era.
Half-length painting of Mary Shelley by Richard Rothwell, exhibited 1840. She sits on a red-draped couch, gazing serenely forward, wearing a black dress that leaves her shoulders bare. She has a gold waistband and gold band in her hair. A vertical streak of light on the right is thought by some to represent the spirit of her husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley. National Portrait Gallery.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Friends, Associates Frances Wright
On her voyage back to Europe, FW had as companion Robert Owen 's son, Robert Dale Owen . During her stay in Europe, she made the acquaintance of Mary Shelley (who became a friend and...
Friends, Associates Frances Wright
Mary Shelley was present at FW 's departure. Frances Trollope was disappointed by the conditions of the colony and even more so by what she felt had been a misrepresentation of its advantages. Fearing for...
Family and Intimate relationships Mary Wollstonecraft
After a long and painful labour, MW bore her second daughter, Mary .
Tomalin, Claire. The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft. Penguin.
275-6
Occupation Mary Wollstonecraft
She took strongly against the manners of the aristocracy but formed a strong bond with the eldest of her three pupils, Margaret King , who was fourteen years old, tall and plain, with a wonderful...
Textual Features Dorothy Wellesley
DW 's selection, though, demonstrates a serious interest in women's literary and feminist history. Of the selections whose authors can be identified, almost half are women. Though Marguerite, Lady Blessington , doyenne of the albums...
Intertextuality and Influence Augusta Webster
During her tenure she encountered the very best and worst of late Victorian poetry. Her published reviews, which critic Marysa Demoor characterises as expressing a hesitant modernism,
Demoor, Marysa. “Women Poets as Critics in the <span data-tei-ns-tag="tei_title" data-tei-title-lvl=‘j’>Athenæum</span>: Ungendered Anonymity Unmasked”. Nineteenth-Century Prose, Vol.
24
, No. 1, pp. 51-71.
61
included appraisals of Robert Bridges ,...
Textual Production Emma Tennant
For Felony: The Private History of The Aspern Papers: A Novel, ET used Henry James 's friendship with Constance Fenimore Woolson , and Mary Shelley 's stepsister Claire Clairmont as source for his novel.
“Emma Tennant”. Fantastic Fiction.
Travel Germaine de Staël
Napoleon's escape from Elba sent her back from Paris to Coppet. She was there as Mary Shelley was writing Frankenstein on the other side of Lake Geneva. Not until late 1816 did she return...
Textual Production Muriel Spark
MS published her first solo book, the biographical study Child of Light: A Reassessment of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley.
Rees, David. Muriel Spark, William Trevor, Ian McEwan, A Bibliography of their First Editions. Colophon Press.
7
Textual Production Muriel Spark
MS published My Best Mary: The Selected Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, which she edited together with Derek Stanford .
The half-title wrongly lists MS as editor of a complete edition of Shelley's The Last Man.
Rees, David. Muriel Spark, William Trevor, Ian McEwan, A Bibliography of their First Editions. Colophon Press.
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Rees, David. Muriel Spark, William Trevor, Ian McEwan, A Bibliography of their First Editions. Colophon Press.
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Publishing Muriel Spark
Alan Pryce-Jones , editor of the Times Literary Supplement, commissioned MS for a middle page on Mary Shelley before her book appeared. Spark also gave a talk on Shelley for the BBC Third Programme...
Textual Production Percy Bysshe Shelley
Peacock's essay had appeared the previous year in the short-lived periodical Olliers Literary Miscellany. Shelley's riposte remained unpublished until Mary Shelley edited his Essays, Letters from Abroad, Translations and Fragments in 1840.
Textual Production Percy Bysshe Shelley
When Percy Shelley discovered, and was deeply moved by, the story of Beatrice Cenci, he suggested to Mary Shelley that she should write a tragedy on the subject, but Mary was unwilling to do so.
Textual Production Percy Bysshe Shelley
This treatment of the legend of Psyche reflects his platonic love for Emilia Viviani , a teenage girl who was unwillingly an inmate of a convent. Mary Shelley is relegated to the secondary role of...
Reception Percy Bysshe Shelley
For generations PBS appeared the quintessential image of the Romantic poet, whose work influenced such poets as Mathilde Blind , Amy Levy , Alice Meynell , Sarojini Naidu —though for some of them he was...

Timeline

4 April 1788: At about the time that he lost his religious...

Writing climate item

4 April 1788

At about the time that he lost his religious faith, William Godwin began keeping a diary, which he continued almost daily until 26 March 1836, only two weeks before he died.

1806: The Last Man, or Omegarus and Syderia, a...

Writing climate item

1806

The Last Man, or Omegarus and Syderia, a Romance in Futurity appeared anonymously (twenty years before Mary Shelley 's novel with the same main title): it was translated from Jean-Baptiste François-Xavier Cousin de Grainville 's...

10 April 1815: The largest volcanic eruption in modern times,...

National or international item

10 April 1815

The largest volcanic eruption in modern times, that of Mount Tambora in what is now Indonesia, buried an entire civilization. It had twice the magnitude of the later Krakatoa eruption.

: The launching of the first Rhine pleasure...

Building item

Spring1816

The launching of the first Rhine pleasure boat powered by steam amazed onlookers and was reported in newspapers. The first cross-Channel steamer began operating the same year.

By 18 September 1820: A nationwide campaign of women petitioning...

National or international item

By 18 September 1820

A nationwide campaign of women petitioning on behalf of Queen Caroline was one factor in the abandoning of her trial for adultery.

1883: In Also sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spake Zarathustra),...

Writing climate item

1883

In Also sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spake Zarathustra), Friedrich Nietzsche coined his idea of the lastman, as the citizen of a democray, who has, Nietsche thought, abandoned self-mastery and settled for living as a slave.

By early October 1930: London publisher Gerald Howe issued a composite...

Building item

By early October 1930

London publisher Gerald Howe issued a composite biography entitled Six Women of the World, which had previously made up six volumes in a Representative Women series, 1927-9.

Texts

Shelley, Mary. “Chronology”. The Journals of Mary Shelley: 1814-1844, edited by Paula R. Feldman and Diana Scott-Kilvert, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995, p. xxxvii - xlii.
Shelley, Percy Bysshe. Essays, Letters from Abroad, Translations and Fragments. Editor Shelley, Mary, Edward Moxon, 1840.
Shelley, Mary. Falkner. Saunders and Otley, 1837.
Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mayor and Jones.
Shelley, Mary, and Percy Bysshe Shelley. History of a Six Weeks’ Tour Through a Part of France, Switzerland, Germany and Holland. T. Hookham and C. and J. Ollier, 1817.
Shelley, Mary. “Introduction”. Frankenstein, edited by David Lorne Macdonald and Kathleen Scherf, Broadview, 1994, pp. 11-43.
Shelley, Mary. “Introduction”. The Last Man, edited by Anne McWhir, Broadview, 1996, p. xiii - xlv.
Shelley, Mary. “Introduction”. Lodore, edited by Lisa Vargo, Broadview, 1997, pp. 9-45.
Shelley, Mary. Lodore. Richard Bentley, 1835.
Shelley, Mary. Lodore. Editor Vargo, Lisa, Broadview, 1997.
Shelley, Mary. Mary Shelley’s Literary Lives and Other Writings. Editor Crook, Nora, Pickering and Chatto, 2002.
Shelley, Mary. Mathilda. Editor Nitchie, Elizabeth, University of North Carolina Press, 1959.
Shelley, Mary. Novels and Selected Works. Editor Crook, Nora, William Pickering, 1996.
Shelley, Mary. Perkin Warbeck. Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, 1830.
Shelley, Percy Bysshe. Posthumous Poems. Editor Shelley, Mary, John and Henry L. Hunt, 1824.
Shelley, Mary. Proserpine &amp; Midas: Two Unpublished Mythological Dramas by Mary Shelley. Editor Koszul, André Henri, Humphrey Milford, 1922.
Shelley, Mary. “Prosperine”. The Winter’s Wreath, Whittaker, pp. 1-20.
Shelley, Mary. Rambles in Germany and Italy in 1840, 1842 and 1843. Edward Moxon, 1844.
Shelley, Mary. The Journals of Mary Shelley, 1814-1844. Editors Feldman, Paula R. and Diana Scott-Kilvert, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995.
Shelley, Mary. The Last Man. Editor McWhir, Anne, Broadview, 1996.
Shelley, Mary. The Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. Editor Bennett, Betty T., Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980.
Shelley, Mary. Valperga. G. and W. B. Whittaker, 1823.