Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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...
