This collection covers the lyrical poetry of Mary Shelley, as well as her writings for Lardner's "Cabinet Cyclopaedia of Biography" and some other materials only recently attributed to her.

This collection covers the lyrical poetry of Mary Shelley, as well as her writings for Lardner's "Cabinet Cyclopaedia of Biography" and some other materials only recently attributed to her.

This collection covers the lyrical poetry of Mary Shelley, as well as her writings for Lardner's "Cabinet Cyclopaedia of Biography" and some other materials only recently attributed to her.

This collection covers the lyrical poetry of Mary Shelley, as well as her writings for Lardner's "Cabinet Cyclopaedia of Biography" and some other materials only recently attributed to her.

Publisher description

Pioneers in life writing, Mary Wollstonecraft, author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), and Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein (1818 ), are now widely regarded as two of the leading writers of the Romantic period. They are both responsible for opening up new possibilities for women in genres traditionally dominated by men. This volume brings together essays on Wollstonecraft’s and Shelley’s life writing by some of the most prominent scholars in Canada, Australia, and the United States. It also includes a full-length play by award-winning Canadian playwright Rose Scollard. Together, the essays and the play explore the connections between mother and daughter, between writing and life, and between criticism and creation. They offer a new understanding of two important writers, of a literary period, and of emergent modes of life writing. Essayists include Judith Barbour, Betty T. Bennett, Anne K. Mellor, Charles E. Robinson, Eleanor Ty, and Lisa Vargo. Among the works discussed are Wollstonecraft’s Vindication, Letters from Norway, and Maria; or, The Wrongs of Woman; William Godwin’s Memoirs of Wollstonecraft; and Shelley’s Frankenstein, The Last Man, Ladore, and Rambles in Germany and Italy.

Stimulated by new editions of Shelley's writings and the evidence of notebooks, the editors have assembled an outstanding group of international Shelley scholars to work through the implications of recent advances in scholarship. With particular attention to texts that have been neglected or underestimated, the contributors consider many important aspects of Shelley's prolific and remarkably diverse output, including the verse letter, plays, prose essays, satire, pamphlets, political verse, romance, prefaces, translations from the Greek, prose style, artistic representations, fragments and early writings. Revaluations of Shelley's youthful works, often criticized for their over-exuberance, pay dividends as they reveal Shelley's early maturation as a writer and also shed light on his later achievement. Taken as a whole, the collection makes evident that Shelley's reputation has been based largely on surprisingly imperfect and incomplete edited publications, driven by Victorian taste and culture. A writer very different from the one we thought we knew emerges from these essays, which are sure to inspire more reappraisals of Shelley's work.

The Politics of Romanticism examines the relationship between two major traditions which have not been considered in conjunction: British Romanticism and social contract philosophy. She argues that an emerging political vocabulary was translated into a literary vocabulary in social contract theory, which shaped the literature of Romantic Britain, as well as German Idealism, the philosophical tradition through which Romanticism is more usually understood. Beenstock locates the Romantic movement's coherence in contract theory's definitive dilemma: the critical disruption of the individual and the social collective. By looking at the intersection of the social contract, Scottish Enlightenment philosophy, and canonical works of Romanticism and its political culture, her book provides an alternative to the model of retreat which has dominated accounts of Romanticism of the last century.

A Best Novel of Summer (New York Times Book Review) From the acclaimed author of Mr. Dickens and His Carol, a richly-imagined reckoning with the life of another cherished literary legend: Mary Wollstonecraft – arguably the world’s first feminist August, 1797. Midwife Parthenia Blenkinsop has delivered countless babies, but nothing prepares her for the experience that unfolds when she arrives at Mary Wollstonecraft’s door. Over the eleven harrowing days that follow, as Mrs. Blenkinsop fights for the survival of both mother and newborn, Wollstonecraft recounts the life she dared to live amidst the impossible constraints and prejudices of the late 18th century, rejecting the tyranny of men and marriage, risking everything to demand equality for herself and all women. She weaves her riveting tale to give her fragile daughter a reason to live, even as her own strength wanes. Wollstonecraft’s urgent story of loss and triumph forms the heartbreakingly brief intersection between the lives of a mother and daughter who will change the arc of history and thought. In radiant prose, Samantha Silva delivers an ode to the dazzling life of Mary Wollstonecraft, one of the world's most influential thinkers and mother of the famous novelist Mary Shelley. But at its heart, Love and Fury is a story about the power of a woman reclaiming her own narrative to pass on to her daughter, and all daughters, for generations to come.