Mary Shelley [Kindle Edition]

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)

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.

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.