Mary Shelley (Hardcover)

In some ways, she could hardly fail. Daughter of William Godwin (An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice) and Mary Wollstonecraft (A Vindication of the Rights of Woman), and wife of the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Shelley had literary radicalism in her blood and her bed. Inspired by a stormy night of ghost stories on Lake Geneva, where she, her husband, Byron and John Polidori were staying, Frankenstein the story was born, or given life, telling of love, rejection, and promethean ambition. Later in life she would talk of it as her "hideous progeny", and invite it to "go forth and prosper". By then it already had, its lifeblood drained by the vampiric attentions of the stage, as it would later be by the screen. And 18-year-old Mary still had the rest of her life to lead. Miranda Seymour convincingly supplants the monstrous legend with its creator, negotiating what she refers to as the "biographer's sandpit" of the novel, and its post-publication revisionism. After Shelley's death by drowning, Mary continued to write modestly received novels such as The Last Man and the despairingly autobiographical Mathilda, as well as short stories for ladies' annuals, to support her impoverished father, and stolidly devoted son. She was also, controversially, the keeper of Shelley's flame, while her own identity passed from "the author of Frankenstein" to Mrs Shelley. Seymour's extensive reading, in unpublished journals and correspondence, assists her in capturing the grinding minutiae of Mary's melancholic life, a seemingly interminable cycle of birth and death for her children, accompanied by a debilitating guilt that her mother had died shortly after her own birth. Neither the feminist icon nor the sullen wife, Mary emerges as a talented, burdened soul who refused to burn up in her stellar trajectory, but instead found an admirable resilience amid tragedy and decadence. Seymour's occasionally uneven contribution, the first major study of her life (and published redemptively by John Murray, who turned down Frankenstein), quietly dampens the Romantic myth and instead presents a hard-working, troubled artisan more touched than fired by genius. --David Vincent

Twenty-five years ago, Seymour wrote a historical novel based on Lord Byron's life that reflected the prevailing view of Mary Shelley, the willful child-bride who, briefly touched by her husband's genius, produced one extraordinary work before sinking back into her native mediocrity and conventionality. Now, in this splendid biography, Seymour makes handsome amends. The Mary Shelley who emerges here is a remarkably mature and steady woman who suffered greatly, first from her erratic husband's self-absorption and then from losing three of her four children before she turned 25. Close to penniless after her husband's death by drowning, she successfully turned to hack work to support her son, her father and his second wife. In her vulnerable position as an unmarried woman making her own living, widely viewed as scandalous and immoral, she was frequently the target of slander. Throughout it all, she remained quick to speak out in defense of women like herself, who had struck out for personal freedom and been condemned for it. The tangle of irregular sexual connections, illegitimacy and adultery that characterized Shelley's circle of literary friends will surprise readers unfamiliar with early Victorian manners, as will the modern-sounding postmortem spin placed on Mary's and Percy's respective reputations. Nor is Frankenstein neglected, as Seymour convincingly argues for its roots in Mary's detestation of slavery and uncovers biographical sources for some of its scenes. Her primary concern, however, is the whole life of her subject, whom she admires deeply and whom she presents as flawed but heroic.

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This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.