- Hardcover: 666 pages
- Publisher: John Murray Publishers Ltd; First edition edition (26 Oct 2000)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0719557119
- ISBN-13: 978-0719557118
- Product Dimensions: 23.8 x 16.4 x 4.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 349,619 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
Mary Shelley
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Amazon.co.uk Review
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 Seymour's extensive reading, in unpublished journals and correspondence, assists her in capturing the grinding minutiae of Mary's melancholic life, a seemingly interminable cycle of birth and death for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
Product Description
Mary Shelley's own life was as passionate and dramatic as her fiction. Drawing on unexplored sources, this biography presents a picture of a woman misunderstood, intense, loyal, generous; a woman possessed of a dark and brilliant imagination which gave the public a myth for her time and for today.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This biography of Mary Shelley (1797-1851) was published in 2000. Over 650+ pages, Miranda Seymour - author of biographies on Robert Graves and Ottoline Morrell - describes in painstaking detail the life trajectory of the author of Frankenstein.
Seymour expresses her intention to correct Richard Holmes's portrait (in Shelley: The Pursuit) of Mary as a "sulky, bad-tempered young wife" (xiii). She argues that Mary's efforts to sanctify her husband posthumously led to her own position in the public literary realm being denigrated. The more angelic Shelley became in the public consciousness, the more Mary was criticised for having caused him problems whilst he was alive. However, perhaps surprisingly, Seymour cannot resist reproaching Mary either: "Her desire to control [her son Percy's] life" is, Seymour writes, "hard to condone" (523). She also did her poet husband a disservice in angelicising him: "Shelley's reputation as a radical poet had survived in spite, not because of Mary's efforts" (556). Seemingly tired of recounting Mary's melancholy moods, Seymour concludes: "Mary could brood with the best of them when she chose" (382). Like many Romantic critics, she is dismissive of the work which Mary published after Shelley's death in a sailing accident off the coast of Italy in 1822 when he was 29.
As a child, Mary was bookish, proud of her famous parents, and wilfully argumentative with her stepmother (in turn Mrs Godwin "was eager to see the back of her strong-willed and aggressive stepdaughter", 71). Shelley, who arrived at their home in Skinner Street to meet Godwin, his erstwhile hero and author of Political Justice, "burst into their lives like a comet" (100). To Mary, her half-sister Fanny and her step-sister Claire (who later gave birth to a daughter by Lord Byron), Shelley resembled "the hero of a romance" (68). Mary embarked on a wandering life with the poet (who was still married to Harriet, pregnant with their second child) and bore him four children, only one of whom survived their restless life to reach adulthood. The elopement had dramatic consequences for Mary: estrangement from her father and social ostracism when she returned to England after Shelley's death at sea (she had married him in late 1816 after Harriet's suicide). Her life after Shelley - not yet 25 when he died, she lived to be 53 - was exacerbated by unceasing money worries, concerns about her boat-loving, reclusive son, and arguments with Claire Clairmont and friends whom she trusted and by whom she was betrayed. On top of this, she seems - as Seymour surmises from her characteristically oblique diary entries - to have suffered disappointment in love. What's more certain is that Mary repeatedly came into conflict with those who wanted to write about her husband and with the man who didn't - Shelley's father Sir Timothy, on whom she depended for a yearly allowance. No longer able to write, she died of an undetected brain tumour in London in 1851.
As fascinating as it is to learn more about the life of this female Romantic author, Seymour includes so much detail, also about the lives of those connected to her subject, that you can forget at times that you're reading a biography of Mary Shelley. It is a rambling account that seems to lack a cohesive narrative or direction, frequently leaving readers lost in the trees and wondering at times, perhaps, if they are in a wood at all. (3 stars)
Recommended>
1. Louise Schutz Boas, Harriet Shelley: Five Long Years (1962)
2. Janet Todd, Death and the Maidens: Fanny Wollstonecraft and the Shelley Circle (2007)
Seymour expresses her intention to correct Richard Holmes's portrait (in Shelley: The Pursuit) of Mary as a "sulky, bad-tempered young wife" (xiii). She argues that Mary's efforts to sanctify her husband posthumously led to her own position in the public literary realm being denigrated. The more angelic Shelley became in the public consciousness, the more Mary was criticised for having caused him problems whilst he was alive. However, perhaps surprisingly, Seymour cannot resist reproaching Mary either: "Her desire to control [her son Percy's] life" is, Seymour writes, "hard to condone" (523). She also did her poet husband a disservice in angelicising him: "Shelley's reputation as a radical poet had survived in spite, not because of Mary's efforts" (556). Seemingly tired of recounting Mary's melancholy moods, Seymour concludes: "Mary could brood with the best of them when she chose" (382). Like many Romantic critics, she is dismissive of the work which Mary published after Shelley's death in a sailing accident off the coast of Italy in 1822 when he was 29.
As a child, Mary was bookish, proud of her famous parents, and wilfully argumentative with her stepmother (in turn Mrs Godwin "was eager to see the back of her strong-willed and aggressive stepdaughter", 71). Shelley, who arrived at their home in Skinner Street to meet Godwin, his erstwhile hero and author of Political Justice, "burst into their lives like a comet" (100). To Mary, her half-sister Fanny and her step-sister Claire (who later gave birth to a daughter by Lord Byron), Shelley resembled "the hero of a romance" (68). Mary embarked on a wandering life with the poet (who was still married to Harriet, pregnant with their second child) and bore him four children, only one of whom survived their restless life to reach adulthood. The elopement had dramatic consequences for Mary: estrangement from her father and social ostracism when she returned to England after Shelley's death at sea (she had married him in late 1816 after Harriet's suicide). Her life after Shelley - not yet 25 when he died, she lived to be 53 - was exacerbated by unceasing money worries, concerns about her boat-loving, reclusive son, and arguments with Claire Clairmont and friends whom she trusted and by whom she was betrayed. On top of this, she seems - as Seymour surmises from her characteristically oblique diary entries - to have suffered disappointment in love. What's more certain is that Mary repeatedly came into conflict with those who wanted to write about her husband and with the man who didn't - Shelley's father Sir Timothy, on whom she depended for a yearly allowance. No longer able to write, she died of an undetected brain tumour in London in 1851.
As fascinating as it is to learn more about the life of this female Romantic author, Seymour includes so much detail, also about the lives of those connected to her subject, that you can forget at times that you're reading a biography of Mary Shelley. It is a rambling account that seems to lack a cohesive narrative or direction, frequently leaving readers lost in the trees and wondering at times, perhaps, if they are in a wood at all. (3 stars)
Recommended>
1. Louise Schutz Boas, Harriet Shelley: Five Long Years (1962)
2. Janet Todd, Death and the Maidens: Fanny Wollstonecraft and the Shelley Circle (2007)
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is a very entertaining, captivating read! Not only is it well written but it also presents the facts in an interesting, questioning manner which inspires thought. Contemporary events are explained and used as a colourful backdrop for Mary's life, illustrating how such times influenced her behaviour and thoughts. The men in Mary's life are infuriatingly selfish and irresponsible and this book goes a long way to illuminate how much of a myth Shelley's worth as a man, let alone as a poet, may be. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who has a passing interest in this author as well as her changing times.
3 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
I think that this book encapsulates all that is intriguing and all that is shocking about Mary Shelley's life. Her life was clearly not a bed of roses! She is an interesting character since she came from a family who had an aversion for that which is orthadox. She was one of the romantics and all the important people in her life had radical views and opinions. This book brilliantly captures Mary Shelley's life. I must say, that all the romantics were grossly ugly. It is greatly ironical since they believed in the power of nature and beauty. All in all, it is definately a must read. I benefited greatly from Mary Shelley's experiances and her mistakes.
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