Available:*
Library | Material Type | Shelf Number | Child Count | Shelf Location | Status | Item Holds |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Searching... Science | Book | 823.7 SH44ZB YB, 2000 | 1 | Stacks | Searching... Unknown | Searching... Unavailable |
Searching... Science | Book | PR5398 .M27 2000 | 1 | Stacks | Searching... Unknown | Searching... Unavailable |
Bound With These Titles
On Order
Summary
Summary
Author of six novels, five volumes of biographical lives, two travel books, and numerous short stories, essays, and reviews, Mary Shelley is largely remembered as the author of Frankenstein , as the wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley, and as the daughter of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft. This collection of essays, edited by Betty T. Bennett and Stuart Curran, offers a more complete and complex picture of Mary Shelley, emphasizing the full range and significance of her writings in terms of her own era and ours. Mary Shelley in Her Times brings fresh insight to the life and work of an often neglected or misunderstood writer who, the editors remind us, spent nearly three decades at the center of England's literary world during the country's profound transition between the Romantic and Victorian eras.
The essays in this volume demonstrate the importance of Mary Shelley's neglected novels, including Matilda , Valperga , The Last Man , and Falkner . Other topics include Mary Shelley's work in various literary genres, her editing of her husband's poetry and prose, her politics, and her trajectory as a female writer. This volume advances Mary Shelley studies to a new level of discourse and raises important issues for English Romanticism and women's studies.
Reviews (1)
Choice Review
This collection complements Shelley: Poet and Legislator of the World (1996), also ed. by Bennett (American Univ.) and Curran (Univ. of Pennsylvania), and shares many of that volume's virtues: erudition, engagement with the central issues in contemporary Romantic scholarship, and an impressive respect for evidence. First delivered as papers at a 1997 conference (all but one previously unpublished), the essays place Mary Shelley in her political, historical, intellectual, and social contexts and examine her roles as novelist, biographer, travel writer, publishing phenomenon, poet, editor, reader, and woman (including daughter, wife, and mother). Most noteworthy is the place given to Frankenstein: for the first time in such a collection it is one work among many rather than the sole interest of the volume; Shelley is no longer a one-hit wonder (even The Other Mary Shelley: Beyond Frankenstein, ed. by Audrey Fisch, Anne Mellor, and Esther Schor, CH, Mar'94, implicitly gives Frankenstein pride of place by its pointed exclusion). Challenging and accessible, Bennett and Curran's balanced and diverse collection is highly recommended for upper-division undergraduates and up. J. T. Lynch Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, Newark
Table of Contents
Preface and Acknowledgments | p. ix |
Abbreviations | p. xiii |
1 "Not this time, Victor!": Mary Shelley's Reversioning of Elizabeth, from Frankenstein to Falkner | p. 1 |
2 "To speak in Sanchean phrase": Cervantes and the Politics of Mary Shelley's History of a Six Weeks' Tour | p. 18 |
3 The Impact of Frankenstein | p. 38 |
4 From The Fields of Fancy to Matilda: Mary Shelley's Changing Conception of Her Novella | p. 64 |
5 Mathilda as Dramatic Actress | p. 76 |
6 Between Romance and History: Possibility and Contingency in Godwin, Leibniz, and Mary Shelley's Valperga | p. 88 |
7 Future Uncertain: The Republican Tradition and Its Destiny in Valperga | p. 103 |
8 Reading the End of the World: The Last Man, History, and the Agency of Romantic Authorship | p. 119 |
9 Kindertotenlieder: Mary Shelley and the Art of Losing | p. 134 |
10 Politicizing the Personal: Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley, and the Coterie Novel | p. 147 |
11 Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley: The Female Author between Public and Private Spheres | p. 160 |
12 Poetry as Souvenir: Mary Shelley in the Annuals | p. 173 |
13 "Trying to make it as good as I can": Mary Shelley's Editing of P. B. Shelley's Poetry and Prose | p. 185 |
14 Mary Shelley's Lives and the Reengendering of History | p. 198 |
15 Blood Sisters: Mary Shelley, Liz Lochhead, and the Monster | p. 214 |
Notes | p. 233 |
Contributors | p. 297 |
Index | p. 301 |