The Other Mary Shelley Beyond Frankenstein

Although Frankenstein is now widely taught in classes on Romanticism, little attention has been paid to the considerable corpus of Mary Shelley's other works. Indeed the excitement of the last decade at feminist approaches to Frankenstein has ironically obscured the persona of its author. This collection of essays, written by a preeminent group of Romantic scholars, sketches a portrait of the "other Mary Shelley": the writer and intellectual who recognized the turbulent interplay among issues of family, gender, and society, and whose writings resonate strongly in the setting of contemporary politics, culture, and feminism. By analyzing a previously neglected body of novels, novellas, reviews, travel writing, essays, letters, biographies, and tales, and by emphasizing Mary Shelley's shrewd assessment of Romanticism, the essays in this volume offer a ground-breaking evaluation of one of the foremost cultural critics of the nineteenth century.

Although Frankenstein has now been canonized in the Romantic classroom, less attention than ever has been paid to the considerable corpus of Mary Shelley's other works - in fact, until now the excitement of the last decade over feminist themes found in Frankenstein has helped to obscure the actual persona of its author. This collection of essays however, written by a pre-eminent assemblage of Romantic scholars, begins to sketch a portrait of the "other Mary Shelley"; the writer and intellectual who recognized the turbulent relationship among the various agendae of family, gender, and society, and whose narratives still resonate strongly in the setting of contemporary politics and culture. By analysing a previously neglected body of reviews, essays, novellas, letters, biographies, sketches, and tales, and in locating Mary Shelley as a shrewd critic of the Romantic zeitgeist, the essays in this volume offer a ground-breaking, complete evaluation of one of the foremost thinkers of the 19th century.