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
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...
Textual Features Mary Russell Mitford
MRM 's letters regularly indulge in analysis of books. She comments on works by both men and women, in English and French, and her opinions shift a good deal with age. She reacted with horror...
Textual Features Maureen Duffy
MD 's protagonist here is a being created by experiment, half-man, half-gorilla, a person of two worlds, animal and human.
Duffy, Maureen. That’s How It Was. Virago.
x
This story translates into speciesism the classism which Duffy says she has always lived...
Textual Features Elizabeth Fenton
Fenton sets out to paint a a familiar picture of the everyday occurrences, manners, and habits of life of persons undistinguished either by wealth or fame
Fenton, Elizabeth. The Journal of Mrs. Fenton. Editor Lawrence, Sir Henry, Edward Arnold.
1-2
in British India. But this is largely unfulfilled...
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...
Textual Features Sophia King
This novel about the genesis of evil is told in the first person by its wicked yet pitiable male narrator, presented as a man of strong intellect and strong feeling, whose first words are What...
Textual Features Jane Loudon
This strikingly inventive and ingenious tale seems to owe a good deal to Mary Shelley 's Frankenstein (though Shelley receives no tribute in passing, as do R. B. Sheridan , Byron , and especially Scott
Textual Features Mary Elizabeth Coleridge
In another letter MEC notes that she found the writing of Sara Coleridge (her cousin) and Mary Shelley intensely Englishwomanly.
Coleridge, Mary Elizabeth. Gathered Leaves from the Prose of Mary E. Coleridge. Editor Sichel, Edith, Constable.
219
She concedes that both these writers possess the gift of imagination, but is not...
Textual Features Barbara Hofland
BH explains that she intends to vindicate the character of Richard III (who in her view came back as Perkin Warbeck ) and expose Henry VII as a villain. She used the British Museum again...
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.
20
Rees, David. Muriel Spark, William Trevor, Ian McEwan, A Bibliography of their First Editions. Colophon Press.
20
Textual Production Caroline Norton
In 1832 CN began editing the newly-launched La Belle Assemblée; or, Bell's Court and Fashionable Magazine.
Chedzoy, Alan. A Scandalous Woman: The Story of Caroline Norton. Allison and Busby.
88
Known both as La Belle Assemblée (which had first appeared in 1806 but had petered out) and...
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.
Textual Production Naomi Alderman
NA writes frequently in the Guardian. For instance, in an article on the televising of Margaret Atwood 's The Handmaid's Tale she provides a sketch of utopian and dystopian fiction by women, from Margaret Cavendish
Textual Production Eleanor Anne Porden
EAP claimed that for some years my mind has dwelt with peculiar interest on the possibility of reaching the Pole.
Porden, Eleanor Anne. The Arctic Expeditions. John Murray.
prelims
The catalyst for her writing was her visit to see the ships. The Arctic...

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