Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Mary Shelley
-
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.
Another Freak, also published in MAD
's collection Some Women's Ways, is reprinted in Nineteenth-Century Short Stories by Women (1998) alongside works by both well-known and obscure authors, including Maria Edgeworth
, Mary Shelley
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Ella D'Arcy
Maurois shamelessly fictionalizes and romanticises Shelley; he is more interested in the life than the works, and the same is of course true of his treatment of Mary Shelley
, who begins as a beautiful...
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...
Family and Intimate relationships
Mary Cowden Clarke
Both Novellos were close friends of Mary Shelley
during the 1820s. Mary gave Vincent a lock of the hair of her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft
.
Crook, Nora. “Fourteen New Letters by Mary Shelley”. Keats-Shelley Journal, Vol.
62
, pp. 37-61.
43
Friends, Associates
Mary Cowden Clarke
MCC
's parents frequently entertained eminent literary figures in a drawing-room where the paintings were all executed by distinguished friends. At an early age she became acquainted with Charles
and Mary Lamb
, Leigh Hunt
Education
Mary Cowden Clarke
MCC
later remembered her responsibility, when very young, of escorting her two next younger brothers to their school.
Clarke, Mary Cowden. My Long Life. Dodd, Mead.
10
Unlike them, she began her education at home. She writes fondly about the rich array of...
Doctor Frankenstein begins as I, the performer / in the tense arena,
Atwood, Margaret, and Charles Pachter. Speeches for Doctor Frankenstein. Cranbrook Academy of Art.
i
working in a void upon emptiness. He confronts his potential creation like an opponent. The thing / refuses to be shaped, it...
Intertextuality and Influence
Margaret Atwood
Several of these poems, like Death of a Young Son by Drowning, treat actual incidents of Moodie's life while transforming the plaintive tone adopted in Moodie's own narratives into one of tragedy. Atwood's handling...
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
Occupation
William Harrison Ainsworth
The son of a solicitor, he entered the same profession but left to pursue his literary ambitions. He wrote many historical novels. As editor or proprietor of Bentley's Magazine, Ainsworth's Magazine, and the...
