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 Thomas Moore
His social circle included prominent literary women: Mary Tighe , sisters Lady Morgan (Sydney Owenson) and Olivia Clarke , Mary Shelley , Marguerite Blessington , Louisa Stuart Costello , and Caroline Norton . He knew...
Intertextuality and Influence Alice Munro
Most exotic and improbable of all is The Albanian Virgin (based on an actual experience, about 1900, of a librarian from Clinton, Ontario),
Thacker, Robert. Alice Munro. McClelland and Stewart, 2005.
445
which makes use of the ancient tradition, in a tribal society...
Friends, Associates Caroline Norton
CN found solace and political support in other friendships. Lawyer Abraham Hayward and MP Thomas Noon Talfourd became her allies in her attempts to change the law on custody of children, and gossip soon alleged...
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, 1995.
88
Known both as La Belle Assemblée (which had first appeared in 1806 but had petered out) and...
Family and Intimate relationships Tillie Olsen
Tillie Lerner's instructor and inspiration in political radicalism, Eugene Konecky , was also interested in erotic relations with young girls.
Reid, Panthea. Tillie Olsen: One Woman, Many Riddles. Rutgers University Press, 2010.
37, 41
In summer 1927 she took my first lover—probably a young man named...
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, 1818.
prelims
The catalyst for her writing was her visit to see the ships. The Arctic...
Textual Production Dorothy L. Sayers
Between 1928 and 1934, DLS edited three volumes under the series title Great Short Stories of Detection, Mystery and Horror. Her introductions to these collections offered a scholarly history of the genre of detective...
Literary responses Marie de Sévigné
For years MS was ridiculed for her incorrect orthography, but in fact her unorthodox spelling was modern. It was that advocated by the reformers, participants in a movement to reduce the number of unphonetic letters...
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...
death Percy Bysshe Shelley
PBS , poet and husband of Mary Shelley , drowned near La Spezia in Italy when his boat capsized in a storm.
Stephen, Sir Leslie, and Sidney Lee, editors. The Dictionary of National Biography. Smith, Elder, 1908–2025, 22 vols. plus supplements.
Textual Production Percy Bysshe Shelley
PBS made (and Mary Shelley transcribed) the first English translation of Plato 's Symposium to attempt even approximate honesty about its homosexual content.
Gonda, Caroline. “Lodore and Fanny Derhams Story”. Womens Writing, Vol.
6
, No. 3, 1999, pp. 329-44.
337
Family and Intimate relationships Percy Bysshe Shelley
In 1814 PBS 's successive half-serious erotic relationships with other women were all displaced by his love for Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin , the daughter of parents, one dead and one living, whom he passionately admired...
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...

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