query: who were mary shelley's parents?

title: Mary Shelley

text: biography of the poet were published. In 1826, Percy Florence became the legal heir of the Shelley estate after the death of his half-brother Charles Shelley, his father's son by Harriet Shelley. Sir Timothy raised Mary's allowance from £100 a year to £250 but remained as difficult as ever. Mary Shelley enjoyed the stimulating society of William Godwin's circle, but poverty prevented her from socialising as she wished. She also felt ostracised by those who, like Sir Timothy, still disapproved of her relationship with Percy Bysshe Shelley. In the summer of 1824, Mary Shelley moved to Kentish Town in north

title: Mary Shelley

text: Mary Shelley Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (née Godwin; 30 August 1797 – 1 February 1851) was an English novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer, best known for her Gothic novel "Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus" (1818). She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley. Her father was the political philosopher William Godwin, and her mother was the philosopher and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft. After Wollstonecraft's death less than a month after her daughter Mary was born, Mary was raised by Godwin, who was able to provide his daughter

title: Mary Shelley

text: characters as versions of Mary Shelley, William Godwin, and Percy Shelley. Mary Shelley herself confided that she modelled the central characters of "The Last Man" on her Italian circle. Lord Raymond, who leaves England to fight for the Greeks and dies in Constantinople, is based on Lord Byron; and the utopian Adrian, Earl of Windsor, who leads his followers in search of a natural paradise and dies when his boat sinks in a storm, is a fictional portrait of Percy Bysshe Shelley. However, as she wrote in her review of Godwin's novel "Cloudesley" (1830), she did not believe that authors

title: Mary Shelley

text: are marked with a "(CC)" and those from "The Other Mary Shelley" with an "(OMS)". Mary Shelley Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (née Godwin; 30 August 1797 – 1 February 1851) was an English novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer, best known for her Gothic novel "Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus" (1818). She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley. Her father was the political philosopher William Godwin, and her mother was the philosopher and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft. After Wollstonecraft's death less than a month after her daughter

title: Mary Shelley

text: in 1945, editor Frederick Jones wrote, "a collection of the present size could not be justified by the general quality of the letters or by Mary Shelley's importance as a writer. It is as the wife of [Percy Bysshe Shelley] that she excites our interest." This attitude had not disappeared by 1980 when Betty T. Bennett published the first volume of Mary Shelley's complete letters. As she explains, "the fact is that until recent years scholars have generally regarded Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley as a result: William Godwin's and Mary Wollstonecraft's daughter who became Shelley's Pygmalion." It was not until Emily

title: Mary Shelley

text: individualistic Romantic ethos promoted by Percy Shelley and the Enlightenment political theories articulated by her father, William Godwin. Mary Shelley was born Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin in Somers Town, London, in 1797. She was the second child of the feminist philosopher, educator, and writer Mary Wollstonecraft, and the first child of the philosopher, novelist, and journalist William Godwin. Wollstonecraft died of puerperal fever shortly after Mary was born. Godwin was left to bring up Mary, along with her older half-sister, Fanny Imlay, Wollstonecraft's child by the American speculator Gilbert Imlay. A year after Wollstonecraft's death, Godwin published his "Memoirs of the

title: Mary Shelley

text: to money until he inherited his estate, because his family did not want him wasting it on projects of "political justice". After several months of promises, Shelley announced that he either could not or would not pay off all of Godwin's debts. Godwin was angry and felt betrayed. Mary and Percy began meeting each other secretly at Mary Wollstonecraft's grave in St Pancras Churchyard, and they fell in love—she was nearly 17, he nearly 22. On 26 June 1814, Shelley and Godwin declared their love for one another as Shelley announced he could not hide his "ardent passion", leading her

title: Mary Shelley

text: Blanc as well as the revolutionary legacy of the philosopher and novelist Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Mary Shelley's last full-length book, written in the form of letters and published in 1844, was "Rambles in Germany and Italy in 1840, 1842 and 1843", which recorded her travels with her son Percy Florence and his university friends. In "Rambles", Shelley follows the tradition of Mary Wollstonecraft's "Letters Written in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark" and her own "A History of a Six Weeks' Tour" in mapping her personal and political landscape through the discourse of sensibility and sympathy. For Shelley, building sympathetic connections between people

title: Mary Shelley

text: "were merely copying from our own hearts". William Godwin regarded his daughter's characters as types rather than portraits from real life. Some modern critics, such as Patricia Clemit and Jane Blumberg, have taken the same view, resisting autobiographical readings of Mary Shelley's works. Mary Shelley employed the techniques of many different novelistic genres, most vividly the Godwinian novel, Walter Scott's new historical novel, and the Gothic novel. The Godwinian novel, made popular during the 1790s with works such as Godwin's "Caleb Williams" (1794), "employed a Rousseauvian confessional form to explore the contradictory relations between the self and society", and "Frankenstein"

title: Mary Shelley

text: Switzerland. "It was acting in a novel, being an incarnate romance," Mary Shelley recalled in 1826. Godwin wrote about France in 1814: "The distress of the inhabitants, whose houses had been burned, their cattle killed and all their wealth destroyed, has given a sting to my detestation of war...". As they travelled, Mary and Percy read works by Mary Wollstonecraft and others, kept a joint journal, and continued their own writing. At Lucerne, lack of money forced the three to turn back. They travelled down the Rhine and by land to the Dutch port of Marsluys, arriving at Gravesend, Kent,

title: Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and His Circle

text: the American Stock Exchange who amassed a large fortune on Wall Street as a specialist in Standard Oil stock. Pforzheimer took a special interest in the lives and works of the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and his contemporaries, including his second wife, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, her parents, William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, her stepsister Claire Clairmont, and such friends and fellow writers as Lord Byron, Teresa Guiccioli, Thomas Jefferson Hogg, Leigh Hunt, Thomas Love Peacock, Horace Smith, and Edward John Trelawny. Besides the books and manuscripts of the Shelley circle, the Collection offers a wide range of collateral materials, among

title: Maurice (Shelley)

text: Maurice (Shelley) "Maurice, or the Fisher's Cot" is a children's story by the Romantic writer Mary Shelley. Written in 1820 for Laurette Tighe, a daughter of her friends Margaret King and George William Tighe, Mary Shelley tried to have it published by her father, William Godwin, but he refused. The text was lost until 1997, when a manuscript copy was discovered in Italy. "Maurice" tells the story of a boy searching for a home and his encounters with a traveller who turns out to be his long-lost father. The story is narrated in a melancholy tone from several points of

title: Mary Shelley

text: was published with his preface and dedicated to his political hero William Godwin. At Marlow, Mary edited the joint journal of the group's 1814 Continental journey, adding material written in Switzerland in 1816, along with Percy's poem "Mont Blanc". The result was the "History of a Six Weeks' Tour", published in November 1817. That autumn, Percy Shelley often lived away from home in London to evade creditors. The threat of a debtor's prison, combined with their ill health and fears of losing custody of their children, contributed to the couple's decision to leave England for Italy on 12 March 1818,

title: Mary Shelley (Doctor Who)

text: Mary Shelley (Doctor Who) Mary Shelley, the English writer best known for her Gothic novel "Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus", has been featured in the fictional universe of the long-running British science fiction television series "Doctor Who" on a number of occasions, most prominently as a character voiced by Julie Cox in a series of audio plays produced by Big Finish Productions based on the series. In the various audio plays, she is a companion of the Eighth Doctor. Mary Shelley's appearances with the Eighth Doctor were the fruition of a nearly decade-long running gag in the Eighth Doctor's audio

title: Mary Shelley (Doctor Who)

text: Axons and King Harold Godwinson at the Battle of Hastings on 14 October 1066. After their adventure in "Army of Death", Mary decided to leave the Doctor's company, as she feared his "other companion", death. Mary Shelley (Doctor Who) Mary Shelley, the English writer best known for her Gothic novel "Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus", has been featured in the fictional universe of the long-running British science fiction television series "Doctor Who" on a number of occasions, most prominently as a character voiced by Julie Cox in a series of audio plays produced by Big Finish Productions based on the

title: Mary Shelley

text: Shelley at the expense of Mary, questioning her intelligence and even her authorship of "Frankenstein". Lady Shelley, Percy Florence's wife, responded in part by presenting a severely edited collection of letters she had inherited, published privately as "Shelley and Mary" in 1882. From "Frankenstein"'s first theatrical adaptation in 1823 to the cinematic adaptations of the 20th century, including the first cinematic version in 1910 and now-famous versions such as James Whale's 1931 "Frankenstein", Mel Brooks' 1974 "Young Frankenstein", and Kenneth Branagh's 1994 "Mary Shelley's Frankenstein", many audiences first encounter the work of Mary Shelley through adaptation. Over the course of

title: Mary Shelley

text: London to be near Jane Williams. She may have been, in the words of her biographer Muriel Spark, "a little in love" with Jane. Jane later disillusioned her by gossiping that Percy had preferred her to Mary, owing to Mary's inadequacy as a wife. At around this time, Mary Shelley was working on her novel, "The Last Man" (1826); and she assisted a series of friends who were writing memoirs of Byron and Percy Shelley—the beginnings of her attempts to immortalise her husband. She also met the American actor John Howard Payne and the American writer Washington Irving, who intrigued

title: Mary Shelley

text: however, blighted for Mary Shelley by the deaths of both her children—Clara, in September 1818 in Venice, and William, in June 1819 in Rome. These losses left her in a deep depression that isolated her from Percy Shelley, who wrote in his notebook: <poem>My dearest Mary, wherefore hast thou gone, And left me in this dreary world alone? Thy form is here indeed—a lovely one— But thou art fled, gone down a dreary road That leads to Sorrow's most obscure abode. For thine own sake I cannot follow thee Do thou return for mine. </poem> For a time, Mary Shelley

title: Shelley Rohde

text: Shelley Rohde Gillian Shelley Mary Rohde (17 May 1933 – 6 December 2007) was a British journalist and author. She was best known in North West England as a reporter and presenter on "Granada Reports", but she is more widely remembered as the biographer of the artist L. S. Lowry. She was born Gillian Shelley Mary Rohde, on 17 May 1933, in London, England, her parents being a scriptwriter father and an actress mother. Shelley took the surname of her mother's second husband, the pilot Douglas Rohde. The girl was largely brought up by her maternal grandmother, Patricia Reardon. The

title: Mary Shelley

text: and after he left university in 1841, he came to live with her. In 1840 and 1842, mother and son travelled together on the continent, journeys that Mary Shelley recorded in "Rambles in Germany and Italy in 1840, 1842 and 1843" (1844). In 1844, Sir Timothy Shelley finally died at the age of ninety, "falling from the stalk like an overblown flower", as Mary put it. For the first time, she and her son were financially independent, though the estate proved less valuable than they had hoped. In the mid-1840s, Mary Shelley found herself the target of three separate blackmailers.

title: Mary Shelley

text: were well-known and increasingly admired. In the summer of 1838 Edward Moxon, the publisher of Tennyson and the son-in-law of Charles Lamb, proposed publishing a collected works of Percy Shelley. Mary was paid £500 to edit the "Poetical Works" (1838), which Sir Timothy insisted should not include a biography. Mary found a way to tell the story of Percy's life, nonetheless: she included extensive biographical notes about the poems. Shelley continued to practice her mother's feminist principles by extending aid to women whom society disapproved of. For instance, Shelley extend financial aid to Diana Mary Dods, a single mother and

title: Mary Shelley

text: with a rich, if informal, education, encouraging her to adhere to his own liberal political theories. When Mary was four, her father married a neighbour, with whom, as her stepmother, Mary came to have a troubled relationship. In 1814, Mary began a romance with one of her father's political followers, Percy Bysshe Shelley, who was already married. Together with Mary's stepsister Claire Clairmont, Mary and Shelley left for France and travelled through Europe. Upon their return to England, Mary was pregnant with Percy's child. Over the next two years, she and Percy faced ostracism, constant debt, and the death of

title: Mary Shelley

text: it in return for £250, but Mary Shelley refused. In 1848, Percy Florence married Jane Gibson St John. The marriage proved a happy one, and Mary Shelley and Jane were fond of each other. Mary lived with her son and daughter-in-law at Field Place, Sussex, the Shelleys' ancestral home, and at Chester Square, London, and accompanied them on travels abroad. Mary Shelley's last years were blighted by illness. From 1839, she suffered from headaches and bouts of paralysis in parts of her body, which sometimes prevented her from reading and writing. On 1 February 1851, at Chester Square, she died

title: Mary Shelley

text: Sunstein's "Mary Shelley: Romance and Reality" in 1989 that a full-length scholarly biography was published. The attempts of Mary Shelley's son and daughter-in-law to "Victorianise" her memory by censoring biographical documents contributed to a perception of Mary Shelley as a more conventional, less reformist figure than her works suggest. Her own timid omissions from Percy Shelley's works and her quiet avoidance of public controversy in her later years added to this impression. Commentary by Hogg, Trelawny, and other admirers of Percy Shelley also tended to downplay Mary Shelley's radicalism. Trelawny's "Records of Shelley, Byron, and the Author" (1878) praised Percy

title: Mary Shelley

text: it, but at the same time "conceal[s] fantasies of equality that occasionally erupt in monstrous images of rage". Mary Poovey reads the first edition of "Frankenstein" as part of a larger pattern in Shelley's writing, which begins with literary self-assertion and ends with conventional femininity. Poovey suggests that "Frankenstein"<nowiki>'</nowiki>s multiple narratives enable Shelley to split her artistic persona: she can "express and efface herself at the same time". Shelley's fear of self-assertion is reflected in the fate of Frankenstein, who is punished for his egotism by losing all his domestic ties. Feminist critics often focus on how authorship itself, particularly

title: Mary Shelley

text: of her authorial ambitions: "I think that I can maintain myself, and there is something inspiriting in the idea." Scholars now consider Mary Shelley to be a major Romantic figure, significant for her literary achievement and her political voice as a woman and a liberal. Collections of Mary Shelley's papers are housed in "Lord Abinger's Shelley Collection" on deposit at the Bodleian Library, the New York Public Library (particularly The Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and His Circle), the Huntington Library, the British Library, and in the John Murray Collection. All essays from "The Cambridge Companion to Mary Shelley"

title: Mary Shelley

text: her. Payne fell in love with her and in 1826 asked her to marry him. She refused, saying that after being married to one genius, she could only marry another. Payne accepted the rejection and tried without success to talk his friend Irving into proposing himself. Mary Shelley was aware of Payne's plan, but how seriously she took it is unclear. In 1827, Mary Shelley was party to a scheme that enabled her friend Isabel Robinson and Isabel's lover, Mary Diana Dods, who wrote under the name David Lyndsay, to embark on a life together in France as man and

title: Mary Shelley (Doctor Who)

text: adventures. Since his first audio adventure, "Storm Warning", the Eighth Doctor had been dropping hints of a friendship with Shelley; in "Storm Warning", he had a copy of Shelley's "Frankenstein" in his TARDIS library, inscribed to him by her, and after he read the preface aloud, he mentioned that what Mary wrote wasn't the entire truth about what happened. Mary's first appearance is in "Mary's Story", a story part of the audio anthology "The Company of Friends". Mary initially encountered the Eighth Doctor in Switzerland in June 1816 and witnessed him apparently coming back to life after being dead, providing

title: Mary Shelley

text: their prematurely born daughter. They married in late 1816, after the suicide of Percy Shelley's first wife, Harriet. In 1816, the couple famously spent a summer with Lord Byron, John William Polidori, and Claire Clairmont near Geneva, Switzerland, where Mary conceived the idea for her novel "Frankenstein". The Shelleys left Britain in 1818 for Italy, where their second and third children died before Mary Shelley gave birth to her last and only surviving child, Percy Florence Shelley. In 1822, her husband drowned when his sailing boat sank during a storm near Viareggio. A year later, Mary Shelley returned to England

title: Mary Shelley

text: these events: that Percy Shelley decided to adopt a local child; that the baby was his by Elise, Claire, or an unknown woman; or that she was Elise's by Byron. Mary Shelley insisted she would have known if Claire had been pregnant, but it is unclear how much she really knew. The events in Naples, a city Mary Shelley later called a paradise inhabited by devils, remain shrouded in mystery. The only certainty is that she herself was not the child’s mother. Elena Adelaide Shelley died in Naples on 9 June 1820. After leaving Naples, the Shelleys settled in Rome,

title: Mary Shelley

text: whom she disliked at first but soon considered a close friend. Percy Shelley seems to have wanted Mary Godwin and Hogg to become lovers; Mary did not dismiss the idea, since in principle she believed in free love. In practice, however, she loved only Percy Shelley and seems to have ventured no further than flirting with Hogg. On 22 February 1815, she gave birth to a two-months premature baby girl, who was not expected to survive. On 6 March, she wrote to Hogg: My dearest Hogg my baby is dead—will you come to see me as soon as you can.

title: Maurice (Shelley)

text: health and requested her presence. Mary Shelley invited Laurette to stay with her in Florence two months after the birth of Percy Florence, but the girl's mother could not bear to part with her. In early 1820, the group moved to Pisa and Claire became like an elder sister to Laurette, taking her to operas and the Carnival. In the summer, the group moved again, from Pisa to Livorno, and Mary Shelley began researching her historical novel "Valperga". Throughout the summer, Claire wrote anxiously to Byron, begging to see Allegra. Believing that the Shelleys were careless parents who were responsible

title: Mary Shelley

text: Jane rather than to Mary. The coast offered Percy Shelley and Edward Williams the chance to enjoy their "perfect plaything for the summer", a new sailing boat. The boat had been designed by Daniel Roberts and Edward Trelawny, an admirer of Byron's who had joined the party in January 1822. On 1 July 1822, Percy Shelley, Edward Ellerker Williams, and Captain Daniel Roberts sailed south down the coast to Livorno. There Percy Shelley discussed with Byron and Leigh Hunt the launch of a radical magazine called "The Liberal". On 8 July, he and Edward Williams set out on the return

title: Mary Shelley

text: at first agreed to support his grandson, Percy Florence, only if he were handed over to an appointed guardian. Mary Shelley rejected this idea instantly. She managed instead to wring out of Sir Timothy a limited annual allowance (which she had to repay when Percy Florence inherited the estate), but to the end of his days he refused to meet her in person and dealt with her only through lawyers. Mary Shelley busied herself with editing her husband's poems, among other literary endeavours, but concern for her son restricted her options. Sir Timothy threatened to stop the allowance if any

title: Mary Shelley (film)

text: 49 out of 100, based on 28 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Mary Shelley (film) Mary Shelley is a 2017 romantic period-drama film directed by Haifaa al-Mansour and written by Emma Jensen. The plot follows Mary Shelley's first love and her romantic relationship with the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, which inspired her to write "Frankenstein". An international co-production, the film stars Elle Fanning as Shelley, with Maisie Williams, Douglas Booth, Bel Powley, and Ben Hardy in supporting roles. The film had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 9, 2017. It was released in the

title: Mary Shelley (film)

text: Mary Shelley (film) Mary Shelley is a 2017 romantic period-drama film directed by Haifaa al-Mansour and written by Emma Jensen. The plot follows Mary Shelley's first love and her romantic relationship with the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, which inspired her to write "Frankenstein". An international co-production, the film stars Elle Fanning as Shelley, with Maisie Williams, Douglas Booth, Bel Powley, and Ben Hardy in supporting roles. The film had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 9, 2017. It was released in the United States on May 25, 2018, by IFC Films, and in the United

title: Percy Florence Shelley

text: Bysshe Shelley, his namesake, and his wife author Mary Shelley. His elder siblings, consisting of a premature girl who died at few weeks old and a brother and a sister who died in childhood left him as the only surviving child as his mother suffered a miscarriage in 1822. His parents lived in Italy for several years, until his father drowned off Livorno, whereupon his mother moved back to England with him. Mary Shelley never remarried; Percy Florence had no further siblings. He joined Harrow School in 1832, and went up to Trinity College, Cambridge in October 1837. Shelley inherited

title: Mary Shelley

text: Hyde Park, London. Both suicides were hushed up. Harriet’s family obstructed Percy Shelley's efforts—fully supported by Mary Godwin—to assume custody of his two children by Harriet. His lawyers advised him to improve his case by marrying; so he and Mary, who was pregnant again, married on 30 December 1816 at St Mildred's Church, Bread Street, London. Mr and Mrs Godwin were present and the marriage ended the family rift. Claire Clairmont gave birth to a baby girl on 13 January, at first called Alba, later Allegra. In March of that year, the Chancery Court ruled Percy Shelley morally unfit to

title: Mary Shelley

text: illegitimate herself who appears to have been a lesbian and gave her the new identity of Isabel Robinson, the wife of a fictitious Walter Sholto Douglas. Shelley also assisted Georgiana Paul, a woman disallowed for by her husband for alleged adultery. Shelley in her diary about her assistance to the latter: "I do not make a boast-I do not say aloud-behold my generosity and greatness of mind-for in truth it is simple justice I perform-and so I am still reviled for being worldly". Mary Shelley continued to treat potential romantic partners with caution. In 1828, she met and flirted with

title: Mary Shelley

text: In 1845, an Italian political exile called Gatteschi, whom she had met in Paris, threatened to publish letters she had sent him. A friend of her son's bribed a police chief into seizing Gatteschi's papers, including the letters, which were then destroyed. Shortly afterwards, Mary Shelley bought some letters written by herself and Percy Bysshe Shelley from a man calling himself G. Byron and posing as the illegitimate son of the late Lord Byron. Also in 1845, Percy Bysshe Shelley's cousin Thomas Medwin approached her claiming to have written a damaging biography of Percy Shelley. He said he would suppress

title: Mary Shelley

text: periods to dodge creditors. The couple's distraught letters reveal their pain at these separations. Pregnant and often ill, Mary Godwin had to cope with Percy's joy at the birth of his son by Harriet Shelley in late 1814 and his constant outings with Claire Clairmont. Shelley and Clairmont were almost certainly lovers, which caused much jealousy on Godwin's part. Shelley greatly offended Godwin at one point when during a walk in the French countryside he suggested that they both take the plunge into a stream naked as it offended her principles. She was partly consoled by the visits of Hogg,

title: Mary Shelley

text: for the study of Percy Shelley's work. As Bennett explains, "biographers and critics agree that Mary Shelley's commitment to bring Shelley the notice she believed his works merited was the single, major force that established Shelley's reputation during a period when he almost certainly would have faded from public view". In her own lifetime, Mary Shelley was taken seriously as a writer, though reviewers often missed her writings' political edge. After her death, however, she was chiefly remembered as the wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley and as the author of "Frankenstein". In fact, in the introduction to her letters published

title: Mary Shelley

text: at the age of fifty-three from what her physician suspected was a brain tumour. According to Jane Shelley, Mary Shelley had asked to be buried with her mother and father; but Percy and Jane, judging the graveyard at St Pancras to be "dreadful", chose to bury her instead at St Peter's Church, Bournemouth, near their new home at Boscombe. On the first anniversary of Mary Shelley's death, the Shelleys opened her box-desk. Inside they found locks of her dead children's hair, a notebook she had shared with Percy Bysshe Shelley, and a copy of his poem "Adonaïs" with one page

title: Mary Shelley

text: assume custody of his children and later placed them with a clergyman's family. Also in March, the Shelleys moved with Claire and Alba to Albion House at Marlow, Buckinghamshire, a large, damp building on the river Thames. There Mary Shelley gave birth to her third child, Clara, on 2 September. At Marlow, they entertained their new friends Marianne and Leigh Hunt, worked hard at their writing, and often discussed politics. Early in the summer of 1817, Mary Shelley finished "Frankenstein", which was published anonymously in January 1818. Reviewers and readers assumed that Percy Shelley was the author, since the book

title: Mary Shelley

text: imagined Windsor as a Garden of Eden. In May 1816, Mary Godwin, Percy Shelley, and their son travelled to Geneva with Claire Clairmont. They planned to spend the summer with the poet Lord Byron, whose recent affair with Claire had left her pregnant. The party arrived at Geneva on 14 May 1816, where Mary called herself "Mrs Shelley". Byron joined them on 25 May, with his young physician, John William Polidori, and rented the Villa Diodati, close to Lake Geneva at the village of Cologny; Percy Shelley rented a smaller building called Maison Chapuis on the waterfront nearby. They spent

title: Mary Shelley

text: husband's life and work. "I am to justify his ways," she had declared in 1824; "I am to make him beloved to all posterity." It was this goal, argues Blumberg, that led her to present Percy's work to the public in the "most popular form possible". To tailor his works for a Victorian audience, she cast Percy Shelley as a lyrical rather than a political poet. As Mary Favret writes, "the disembodied Percy identifies the spirit of poetry itself". Mary glossed Percy's political radicalism as a form of sentimentalism, arguing that his republicanism arose from sympathy for those who were

title: Mary Shelley

text: for truth". He must abandon his family to fulfill his ambition. Mary Shelley believed in the Enlightenment idea that people could improve society through the responsible exercise of political power, but she feared that the irresponsible exercise of power would lead to chaos. In practice, her works largely criticise the way 18th-century thinkers such as her parents believed such change could be brought about. The creature in "Frankenstein", for example, reads books associated with radical ideals but the education he gains from them is ultimately useless. Shelley's works reveal her as less optimistic than Godwin and Wollstonecraft; she lacks faith

title: Percy Bysshe Shelley

text: refused to forward his letters to her. On 30December 1816, barely three weeks after Harriet's body was recovered, Shelley and Mary Godwin were married. The marriage was intended partly to help secure Shelley's custody of his children by Harriet and partly to placate Godwin, who had coldly refused to speak to his daughter for two years, and who now received the couple. The courts, however, awarded custody of Shelley and Harriet's children to foster parents, on the grounds that Shelley was an atheist. The Shelleys took up residence in the village of Marlow, Buckinghamshire, where a friend of Percy's, Thomas

title: Mary Michael Shelley

text: Mary Michael Shelley Mary Shelley (born 1950 in Doylestown, Pa) is an American folk artist with no formal visual art training. Her art work has variously been described as naïve, primitive or self-taught. She graduated from Cornell University in 1972 with a degree in English and Creative Writing, and has lived her entire adult life in Ithaca, NY. She began making her painted low relief woodcarvings in 1974, after her father sent her a painted woodcarving (inspired by the art work of Mario Sanchez, Key West, Florida) that he made of Shelley as a child at the family farm. Shelley

title: Mary Shelley

text: "Lives" had a print run of about 4,000 for each volume: thus, according to Kucich, Mary Shelley's "use of biography to forward the social agenda of women's historiography became one of her most influential political interventions". Soon after Percy Shelley's death, Mary Shelley determined to write his biography. In a letter of 17 November 1822, she announced: "I shall write his life—& thus occupy myself in the only manner from which I can derive consolation." However, her father-in-law, Sir Timothy Shelley, effectively banned her from doing so. Mary began her fostering of Percy's poetic reputation in 1824 with the publication

title: Mary Shelley

text: 1818, the Shelleys travelled south with Claire Clairmont and their servants to Naples, where they stayed for three months, receiving only one visitor, a physician. In 1820, they found themselves plagued by accusations and threats from Paolo and Elise Foggi, former servants whom Percy Shelley had dismissed in Naples shortly after the Foggis had married. The pair revealed that on 27 February 1819 in Naples, Percy Shelley had registered as his child by Mary Shelley a two-month-old baby girl named Elena Adelaide Shelley. The Foggis also claimed that Claire Clairmont was the baby's mother. Biographers have offered various interpretations of

title: Maurice (Shelley)

text: view and focuses on the theme of loss, particularly the separation of parents and children. Shelley explored this partly autobiographical theme in other works written at the same time, including her novel "Mathilda" and her play "Proserpine". The story's straightforward language reflects that of the Romantic poet William Wordsworth, whose works Shelley was reading while she composed "Maurice". In 1814, the seventeen-year-old Mary Shelley (Mary Godwin, at the time) ran off with Percy Bysshe Shelley to continental Europe, accompanied by Claire Clairmont, Mary's stepsister. After six weeks of travelling, they returned to England but continued to live together. Mary returned

title: Mary Shelley

text: in a "sublime and rapturous moment" to say she felt the same way; on either that day or the next, Godwin lost her virginity to Shelley, which tradition claims happened in the cemetery. Godwin described herself as attracted to Shelley's "wild, intellectual, unearthly looks". To Mary's dismay, her father disapproved, and tried to thwart the relationship and salvage the "spotless fame" of his daughter. At about the same time, Mary's father learned of Shelley's inability to pay off the father's debts. Mary, who later wrote of "my excessive and romantic attachment to my father", was confused. She saw Percy Shelley

title: Maurice (Shelley)

text: it is unclear who this child's parents really were. In 1819, the group moved to Rome, where Mary and Percy Shelley's son William died. Mary Shelley had now lost all three of her children and was very depressed. Claire became increasingly concerned about Allegra, as Byron refused to allow her to see their daughter or reveal where she was. Mary, however, became pregnant again, with Percy Florence, and the group traveled from Rome to Pisa and Florence. En route, they became friends with a couple who helped and inspired them: Lady Mountcashell, who as Margaret King had been an eager

title: Mary Shelley

text: achievement. For Shelley, biographical writing was supposed to, in her words, "form as it were a school in which to study the philosophy of history", and to teach "lessons". Most frequently and importantly, these lessons consisted of criticisms of male-dominated institutions such as primogeniture. Shelley emphasises domesticity, romance, family, sympathy, and compassion in the lives of her subjects. Her conviction that such forces could improve society connects her biographical approach with that of other early feminist historians such as Mary Hays and Anna Jameson. Unlike her novels, most of which had an original print run of several hundred copies, the

title: Mary Shelley

text: Mary Shelley was distracted and unhappy in the cramped and remote Villa Magni, which she came to regard as a dungeon. On 16 June, she miscarried, losing so much blood that she nearly died. Rather than wait for a doctor, Percy sat her in a bath of ice to staunch the bleeding, an act the doctor later told him saved her life. All was not well between the couple that summer, however, and Percy spent more time with Jane Williams than with his depressed and debilitated wife. Most of the short poems Shelley wrote at San Terenzo were addressed to

title: Mary Shelley

text: of his "Posthumous Poems". In 1839, while she was working on the "Lives", she prepared a new edition of his poetry, which became, in the words of literary scholar Susan J. Wolfson, "the canonizing event" in the history of her husband's reputation. The following year, Mary Shelley edited a volume of her husband's essays, letters, translations, and fragments, and throughout the 1830s, she introduced his poetry to a wider audience by publishing assorted works in the annual "The Keepsake". Evading Sir Timothy's ban on a biography, Mary Shelley often included in these editions her own annotations and reflections on her

title: Mary Shelley

text: wife. With the help of Payne, whom she kept in the dark about the details, Mary Shelley obtained false passports for the couple. In 1828, she fell ill with smallpox while visiting them in Paris. Weeks later she recovered, unscarred but without her youthful beauty. During the period 1827–40, Mary Shelley was busy as an editor and writer. She wrote the novels "The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck" (1830), "Lodore" (1835), and "Falkner" (1837). She contributed five volumes of "Lives" of Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and French authors to Lardner's "Cabinet Cyclopaedia". She also wrote stories for ladies' magazines. She was still

title: Mary Shelley (Doctor Who)

text: inspiration for Frankenstein. Mary then left with the Doctor and travelled with him in his journeys. In "The Silver Turk", hours after leaving Lake Geneva, the Doctor took Mary to Vienna on 11 September 1873, where they encountered two Cybermen. In "The Witch from the Well", she visited Lincolnshire in 2011 and in the 1650s, where she encountered some Varaxils who were looking for a human who could channel Odic energy. She also met Aleister Portillon, Earl of Wetstone, who was obsessed with Lord Byron and had a biography on Mary herself. During her travels with the Doctor, Mary met

title: Mary Shelley

text: part of the historical record, Shelley uses their narratives to question established theological and political institutions. Shelley sets the male protagonist's compulsive greed for conquest in opposition to a female alternative: reason and sensibility. In "Perkin Warbeck", Shelley's other historical novel, Lady Gordon stands for the values of friendship, domesticity, and equality. Through her, Shelley offers a feminine alternative to the masculine power politics that destroy the male characters. The novel provides a more inclusive historical narrative to challenge the one which usually relates only masculine events. With the rise of feminist literary criticism in the 1970s, Mary Shelley's works,

title: Percy Bysshe Shelley

text: scholars speculate that her true mother was actually Claire Clairmont or Elise Foggi, a nursemaid for the Shelley family. Other scholars postulate that she was a foundling Shelley adopted in hopes of distracting Mary after the death of Clara. Shelley referred to Elena in letters as his "Neapolitan ward". However, Elena was placed with foster parents a few days after her birth and the Shelley family moved on to yet another Italian city, leaving her behind. Elena died seventeen months later, on 10June 1820. The Shelleys moved between various Italian cities during these years; in later 1818 they were living

title: Mary Shelley

text: found comfort only in her writing. The birth of her fourth child, Percy Florence, on 12 November 1819, finally lifted her spirits, though she nursed the memory of her lost children till the end of her life. Italy provided the Shelleys, Byron, and other exiles with a political freedom unattainable at home. Despite its associations with personal loss, Italy became for Mary Shelley "a country which memory painted as paradise". Their Italian years were a time of intense intellectual and creative activity for both Shelleys. While Percy composed a series of major poems, Mary wrote the novel "Matilda", the historical

title: Mary Shelley

text: which include the historical novels "Valperga" (1823) and "Perkin Warbeck" (1830), the apocalyptic novel "The Last Man" (1826), and her final two novels, "Lodore" (1835) and "Falkner" (1837). Studies of her lesser-known works, such as the travel book "Rambles in Germany and Italy" (1844) and the biographical articles for Dionysius Lardner's "Cabinet Cyclopaedia" (1829–46), support the growing view that Mary Shelley remained a political radical throughout her life. Mary Shelley's works often argue that cooperation and sympathy, particularly as practised by women in the family, were the ways to reform civil society. This view was a direct challenge to the

title: Mary Shelley (film)

text: 2018, and in the United Kingdom on July 6, 2018. "Mary Shelley" has grossed $97,321 in the United States and Canada, and $1.8 million in other territories, for a total worldwide of $1.9 million. On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 40% based on 113 reviews, with an average rating of 5.4/10. The website's critical consensus reads, ""Mary Shelley" smooths out its subject's fascinating life and fails to communicate the spark of her classic work, undermining fine period detail and a solid Elle Fanning performance." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of

title: Mary Shelley (film)

text: Kingdom on July 6, 2018, by Curzon Artificial Eye. The film tells the story of writer Mary Shelley's first love, and her romantic relationship with the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, which inspired her to write "Frankenstein". "Mary Shelley" (changed from the original title, "A Storm In the Stars", in January 2017) is based on an original screenplay by Australian screenwriter Emma Jensen. Jensen received development funding from Screen NSW and Screen Australia to develop the screenplay to first draft and her US agents, United Talent Agency, sold the screenplay to US producer Amy Baer. On February 28, 2014, director Haifaa

title: Mary Michael Shelley

text: metaphor, using cows and waitresses as stand-ins for her life experiences and feelings as a woman. Her work frequently contains veiled social commentary. She tends to work in series, the major among these being her diner, farm, outdoor, animal and dream series. Mary Michael Shelley Mary Shelley (born 1950 in Doylestown, Pa) is an American folk artist with no formal visual art training. Her art work has variously been described as naïve, primitive or self-taught. She graduated from Cornell University in 1972 with a degree in English and Creative Writing, and has lived her entire adult life in Ithaca, NY.

title: Mary Shelley

text: of revolution, which ends in a total rejection of the progressive ideals of her own generation". Not only does she reject these Enlightenment political ideals, but she also rejects the Romantic notion that the poetic or literary imagination can offer an alternative. Critics have until recently cited "Lodore" and "Falkner" as evidence of increasing conservatism in Mary Shelley's later works. In 1984, Mary Poovey influentially identified the retreat of Mary Shelley’s reformist politics into the "separate sphere" of the domestic. Poovey suggested that Mary Shelley wrote "Falkner" to resolve her conflicted response to her father's combination of libertarian radicalism and

title: Mary Shelley

text: of a prose poem, with "death and memory as central themes". At the same time, Shelley makes an egalitarian case against monarchy, class distinctions, slavery, and war. Between 1832 and 1839, Mary Shelley wrote many biographies of notable Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and French men and a few women for Dionysius Lardner's "Lives of the Most Eminent Literary and Scientific Men". These formed part of Lardner's "Cabinet Cyclopaedia", one of the best of many such series produced in the 1820s and 1830s in response to growing middle-class demand for self-education. Until the republication of these essays in 2002, their significance within

title: Mary Shelley

text: in places or times far removed from early 19th-century Britain, such as Greece and the reign of Henry IV of France. Shelley was particularly interested in "the fragility of individual identity" and often depicted "the way a person's role in the world can be cataclysmically altered either by an internal emotional upheaval, or by some supernatural occurrence that mirrors an internal schism". In her stories, female identity is tied to a woman's short-lived value in the marriage market while male identity can be sustained and transformed through the use of money. Although Mary Shelley wrote twenty-one short stories for the

title: Mary Shelley

text: be easily divided into radical and conservative halves. She contends that "Shelley was never a passionate radical like her husband and her later lifestyle was not abruptly assumed nor was it a betrayal. She was in fact challenging the political and literary influences of her circle in her first work." In this reading, Shelley's early works are interpreted as a challenge to Godwin and Percy Bysshe Shelley's radicalism. Victor Frankenstein's "thoughtless rejection of family", for example, is seen as evidence of Shelley's constant concern for the domestic. In the 1820s and 1830s, Mary Shelley frequently wrote short stories for gift

title: Mary Shelley

text: the French writer Prosper Mérimée, but her one surviving letter to him appears to be a deflection of his declaration of love. She was delighted when her old friend from Italy, Edward Trelawny, returned to England, and they joked about marriage in their letters. Their friendship had altered, however, following her refusal to cooperate with his proposed biography of Percy Shelley; and he later reacted angrily to her omission of the atheistic section of "Queen Mab" from Percy Shelley's poems. Oblique references in her journals, from the early 1830s until the early 1840s, suggest that Mary Shelley had feelings for

title: Mary Shelley

text: coast near Viareggio, midway between Livorno and Lerici. Trelawny, Byron, and Hunt cremated Percy Shelley’s corpse on the beach at Viareggio. After her husband's death, Mary Shelley lived for a year with Leigh Hunt and his family in Genoa, where she often saw Byron and transcribed his poems. She resolved to live by her pen and for her son, but her financial situation was precarious. On 23 July 1823, she left Genoa for England and stayed with her father and stepmother in the Strand until a small advance from her father-in-law enabled her to lodge nearby. Sir Timothy Shelley had

title: Mary Shelley

text: moved—with Claire Clairmont, who took lodgings nearby—to Bath, where they hoped to keep Claire’s pregnancy secret. At Cologny, Mary Godwin had received two letters from her half-sister, Fanny Imlay, who alluded to her "unhappy life"; on 9 October, Fanny wrote an "alarming letter" from Bristol that sent Percy Shelley racing off to search for her, without success. On the morning of 10 October, Fanny Imlay was found dead in a room at a Swansea inn, along with a suicide note and a laudanum bottle. On 10 December, Percy Shelley's wife, Harriet, was discovered drowned in the Serpentine, a lake in

title: Mary Shelley

text: I wish to see you—It was perfectly well when I went to bed—I awoke in the night to give it suck it appeared to be "sleeping" so quietly that I would not awake it. It was dead then, but we did not find "that" out till morning—from its appearance it evidently died of convulsions—Will you come—you are so calm a creature & Shelley is afraid of a fever from the milk—for I am no longer a mother now. The loss of her child induced acute depression in Mary Godwin, who was haunted by visions of the baby; but she conceived

title: Mary Shelley

text: folded round a silk parcel containing some of his ashes and the remains of his heart. Mary Shelley lived a literary life. Her father encouraged her to learn to write by composing letters, and her favourite occupation as a child was writing stories. Unfortunately, all of Mary's juvenilia were lost when she ran off with Percy in 1814, and none of her surviving manuscripts can be definitively dated before that year. Her first published work is often thought to have been "Mounseer Nongtongpaw", comic verses written for Godwin's "Juvenile Library" when she was ten and a half; however, the poem

title: Mary Shelley

text: journey to Lerici with their eighteen-year-old boatboy, Charles Vivian. They never reached their destination. A letter arrived at Villa Magni from Hunt to Percy Shelley, dated 8 July, saying, "pray write to tell us how you got home, for they say you had bad weather after you sailed monday & we are anxious". "The paper fell from me," Mary told a friend later. "I trembled all over." She and Jane Williams rushed desperately to Livorno and then to Pisa in the fading hope that their husbands were still alive. Ten days after the storm, three bodies washed up on the

title: Mary Shelley

text: the spacious surroundings of Baxter's house and in the companionship of his four daughters, and she returned north in the summer of 1813 for a further stay of 10 months. In the 1831 introduction to "Frankenstein", she recalled: "I wrote then—but in a most common-place style. It was beneath the trees of the grounds belonging to our house, or on the bleak sides of the woodless mountains near, that my true compositions, the airy flights of my imagination, were born and fostered." Mary Godwin may have first met the radical poet-philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley in the interval between her two

title: Mary Shelley

text: found fault with the edition and claim variously that she miscopied, misinterpreted, purposely obscured, and attempted to turn the poet into something he was not". According to Wolfson, Donald Reiman, a modern editor of Percy Bysshe Shelley's works, still refers to Mary Shelley's editions, while acknowledging that her editing style belongs "to an age of editing when the aim was not to establish accurate texts and scholarly apparatus but to present a full record of a writer's career for the general reader". In principle, Mary Shelley believed in publishing every last word of her husband's work; but she found herself

title: Mary Shelley

text: stern insistence on social decorum. Mellor largely agreed, arguing that "Mary Shelley grounded her alternative political ideology on the metaphor of the peaceful, loving, bourgeois family. She thereby implicitly endorsed a conservative vision of gradual evolutionary reform." This vision allowed women to participate in the public sphere but it inherited the inequalities inherent in the bourgeois family. However, in the last decade or so this view has been challenged. For example, Bennett claims that Mary Shelley's works reveal a consistent commitment to Romantic idealism and political reform and Jane Blumberg's study of Shelley's early novels argues that her career cannot

title: Mary Shelley

text: is attributed to another writer in the most recent authoritative collection of her works. Percy Shelley enthusiastically encouraged Mary Shelley's writing: "My husband was, from the first, very anxious that I should prove myself worthy of my parentage, and enrol myself on the page of fame. He was forever inciting me to obtain literary reputation." Certain sections of Mary Shelley's novels are often interpreted as masked rewritings of her life. Critics have pointed to the recurrence of the father–daughter motif in particular as evidence of this autobiographical style. For example, commentators frequently read "Mathilda" (1820) autobiographically, identifying the three central

title: Mary Shelley

text: novel "Valperga", and the plays "Proserpine" and "Midas". Mary wrote "Valperga" to help alleviate her father's financial difficulties, as Percy refused to assist him further. She was often physically ill, however, and prone to depressions. She also had to cope with Percy’s interest in other women, such as Sophia Stacey, Emilia Viviani, and Jane Williams. Since Mary Shelley shared his belief in the non-exclusivity of marriage, she formed emotional ties of her own among the men and women of their circle. She became particularly fond of the Greek revolutionary Prince Alexandros Mavrokordatos and of Jane and Edward Williams. In December

title: Mary Shelley

text: their time writing, boating on the lake, and talking late into the night. "It proved a wet, ungenial summer", Mary Shelley remembered in 1831, "and incessant rain often confined us for days to the house". Sitting around a log fire at Byron's villa, the company amused themselves with German ghost stories, which prompted Byron to propose that they "each write a ghost story". Unable to think of a story, young Mary Godwin became anxious: ""Have you thought of a story?" I was asked each morning, and each morning I was forced to reply with a mortifying negative." During one mid-June

title: Mary Shelley

text: again and had recovered by the summer. With a revival in Percy Shelley's finances after the death of his grandfather, Sir Bysshe Shelley, the couple holidayed in Torquay and then rented a two-storey cottage at Bishopsgate, on the edge of Windsor Great Park. Little is known about this period in Mary Godwin's life, since her journal from May 1815 to July 1816 is lost. At Bishopsgate, Percy wrote his poem "Alastor"; and on 24 January 1816, Mary gave birth to a second child, William, named after her father, and soon nicknamed "Willmouse". In her novel "The Last Man", she later

title: Mary Shelley

text: and from then on devoted herself to the upbringing of her son and a career as a professional author. The last decade of her life was dogged by illness, most likely caused by the brain tumour which killed her at age 53. Until the 1970s, Mary Shelley was known mainly for her efforts to publish her husband's works and for her novel "Frankenstein", which remains widely read and has inspired many theatrical and film adaptations. Recent scholarship has yielded a more comprehensive view of Mary Shelley’s achievements. Scholars have shown increasing interest in her literary output, particularly in her novels,

title: Shelley baronets

text: Shelley, Shelley's son from his second marriage to the author Mary Shelley. Upon the death of Sir Timothy, Percy Florence Shelley became the third Baronet. However, he died childless and the title passed to his first cousin, Edward Shelley, who then became the fourth Baronet. Sir Bysshe Shelley had one son from his second marriage, John Shelley. His name was changed to Shelley-Sidney in 1795. He was created a Baronet, of Penshurst Place, in 1818 (see below). Edward Shelley was the son of John Shelley, the second son of Sir Timothy Shelley. On his death in 1890 the title passed

title: Mary Shelley (film)

text: al-Mansour was set to direct the film. On July 30, 2014, Elle Fanning was cast in the film to play Mary Shelley. "The Diary of a Teenage Girl" star Bel Powley joined the film on March 20, 2015, to play Claire Clairmont, Mary's stepsister, who complicates the relationship between both lovers. On May 8, 2015, Douglas Booth was cast in the film to play the role of Percy, while HanWay Films was on board to produce the film and handle the film's international sales. On February 19, 2016, Ben Hardy joined the film, which would be also produced by Alan

title: Midas (Shelley play)

text: Midas (Shelley play) Midas is a verse drama in blank verse by the Romantic writers Mary Shelley and Percy Bysshe Shelley. Mary wrote the drama and Percy contributed two lyric poems to it. Written in 1820 while the Shelleys were living in Italy, Mary Shelley tried unsuccessfully to have the play published by children's magazines in England in the 1830s; however, it was not published until A. Koszul's 1922 scholarly edition. Whether or not the drama was ever meant to be staged is a point of debate among scholars. The play combines the stories of the musical contest between Apollo

title: Mary Shelley

text: particularly "Frankenstein", began to attract much more attention from scholars. Feminist and psychoanalytic critics were largely responsible for the recovery from neglect of Shelley as a writer. Ellen Moers was one of the first to claim that Shelley's loss of a baby was a crucial influence on the writing of "Frankenstein". She argues that the novel is a "birth myth" in which Shelley comes to terms with her guilt for causing her mother's death as well as for failing as a parent. Shelley scholar Anne K. Mellor suggests that, from a feminist viewpoint, it is a story "about what happens

title: Timothy Shelley

text: All of Shelley's daughters remained unmarried. Shelley inherited the baronetcy in 1815, becoming the 2nd Baronet Shelley, of Castle Goring, Sussex. Timothy Shelley Sir Timothy Shelley, 2nd Baronet of Castle Goring (7 September 1753 – 24 April 1844) was the son of Sir Bysshe Shelley, 1st Baronet of Castle Goring and the father of Romantic poet and dramatist Percy Bysshe Shelley. Shelley was born to Sir Bysshe Shelley and Mary Catherine Michell, Lady Shelley (b. 1734 in Sussex, England), the daughter of Theobald and Mary (nee Tredcroft) Michell. He studied at University College, Oxford, and was awarded his bachelor's in

title: Midas (Shelley play)

text: the figure of Midas to comment on capitalism and imperialism. Midas's initial joy in acquiring gold is symbolic of contemporary England, "racing headlong into its new identity as an industrialized, consumerist society financed by political and mercantile imperialism". For Shelley, these commercial efforts are particularly masculine; Midas's ears, which symbolise emasculation, are juxtaposed to masculinising gold. Furthermore, Shelley suggests that when political leaders become feminised, they lose their political power. She draws an analogy between Midas and George III and George IV, British kings who were often viewed as feminised. Like Percy Shelley, John Keats, and Lord Byron, Mary Shelley

title: Timothy Shelley

text: Timothy Shelley Sir Timothy Shelley, 2nd Baronet of Castle Goring (7 September 1753 – 24 April 1844) was the son of Sir Bysshe Shelley, 1st Baronet of Castle Goring and the father of Romantic poet and dramatist Percy Bysshe Shelley. Shelley was born to Sir Bysshe Shelley and Mary Catherine Michell, Lady Shelley (b. 1734 in Sussex, England), the daughter of Theobald and Mary (nee Tredcroft) Michell. He studied at University College, Oxford, and was awarded his bachelor's in 1778; his master's following in 1781. He then studied law at Lincoln's Inn. Shelley was elected as a member of parliament

title: Mary Shelley

text: the 19th century, Mary Shelley came to be seen as a one-novel author at best, rather than as the professional writer she was; most of her works have remained out of print until the last thirty years, obstructing a larger view of her achievement. In recent decades, the republication of almost all her writing has stimulated a new recognition of its value. Her habit of intensive reading and study, revealed in her journals and letters and reflected in her works, is now better appreciated. Shelley's conception of herself as an author has also been recognised; after Percy's death, she wrote

title: Mary Shelley

text: suffering. She inserted romantic anecdotes of his benevolence, domesticity, and love of the natural world. Portraying herself as Percy's "practical muse", she also noted how she had suggested revisions as he wrote. Despite the emotions stirred by this task, Mary Shelley arguably proved herself in many respects a professional and scholarly editor. Working from Percy's messy, sometimes indecipherable, notebooks, she attempted to form a chronology for his writings, and she included poems, such as "Epipsychidion", addressed to Emilia Viviani, which she would rather have left out. She was forced, however, into several compromises, and, as Blumberg notes, "modern critics have

title: Mary Shelley

text: her body of work was not appreciated. In the view of literary scholar Greg Kucich, they reveal Mary Shelley's "prodigious research across several centuries and in multiple languages", her gift for biographical narrative, and her interest in the "emerging forms of feminist historiography". Shelley wrote in a biographical style popularised by the 18th-century critic Samuel Johnson in his "Lives of the Poets" (1779–81), combining secondary sources, memoir and anecdote, and authorial evaluation. She records details of each writer's life and character, quotes their writing in the original as well as in translation, and ends with a critical assessment of their

title: Mary Shelley

text: is the way to build civil society and to increase knowledge: "knowledge, to enlighten and free the mind from clinging deadening prejudices—a wider circle of sympathy with our fellow-creatures;—these are the uses of travel". Between observations on scenery, culture, and "the people, especially in a political point of view", she uses the travelogue form to explore her roles as a widow and mother and to reflect on revolutionary nationalism in Italy. She also records her "pilgrimage" to scenes associated with Percy Shelley. According to critic Clarissa Orr, Mary Shelley's adoption of a persona of philosophical motherhood gives "Rambles" the unity

title: Mary Shelley

text: annuals between 1823 and 1839, she always saw herself, above all, as a novelist. She wrote to Leigh Hunt, "I write bad articles which help to make me miserable—but I am going to plunge into a novel and hope that its clear water will wash off the mud of the magazines." When they ran off to France in the summer of 1814, Mary Godwin and Percy Shelley began a joint journal, which they published in 1817 under the title "History of a Six Weeks' Tour", adding four letters, two by each of them, based on their visit to Geneva in

title: Mary Shelley

text: in Godwin's theory that humanity could eventually be perfected. As literary scholar Kari Lokke writes, "The Last Man", more so than "Frankenstein", "in its refusal to place humanity at the center of the universe, its questioning of our privileged position in relation to nature ... constitutes a profound and prophetic challenge to Western humanism." Specifically, Mary Shelley's allusions to what radicals believed was a failed revolution in France and the Godwinian, Wollstonecraftian, and Burkean responses to it, challenge "Enlightenment faith in the inevitability of progress through collective efforts". As in "Frankenstein", Shelley "offers a profoundly disenchanted commentary on the age

title: Mary Shelley

text: pressured women into dependence on men. In the view of Shelley scholar Betty T. Bennett, "the novel proposes egalitarian educational paradigms for women and men, which would bring social justice as well as the spiritual and intellectual means by which to meet the challenges life invariably brings". However, "Falkner" is the only one of Mary Shelley's novels in which the heroine's agenda triumphs. The novel's resolution proposes that when female values triumph over violent and destructive masculinity, men will be freed to express the "compassion, sympathy, and generosity" of their better natures. "Frankenstein", like much Gothic fiction of the period,

title: Mary Shelley

text: contribution to the novel is unknown and has been argued over by readers and critics. There are differences in the 1818, 1823 and 1831 editions and Mary Shelley wrote, "I certainly did not owe the suggestion of one incident, nor scarcely of one train of feeling, to my husband, and yet but for his incitement, it would never have taken the form in which it was presented to the world." She wrote that the preface to the first edition was Percy's work "as far as I can recollect." James Rieger concluded Percy's "assistance at every point in the book's manufacture

title: Mary Shelley

text: on 13 September 1814. The situation awaiting Mary Godwin in England was fraught with complications, some of which she had not foreseen. Either before or during the journey, she had become pregnant. She and Percy now found themselves penniless, and, to Mary's genuine surprise, her father refused to have anything to do with her. The couple moved with Claire into lodgings at Somers Town, and later, Nelson Square. They maintained their intense programme of reading and writing, and entertained Percy Shelley's friends, such as Thomas Jefferson Hogg and the writer Thomas Love Peacock. Percy Shelley sometimes left home for short