Book description
These three works of fiction - two by Mary Wollstonecraft, the radical
author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, and one by her daughter
Mary Shelley, creator of Frankenstein - are powerfully emotive stories
that combine passion with forceful feminist argument. In Mary
Wollstonecraft's Mary, the heroine flees her young husband in order to
nurse her dearest friend, Ann, and finds genuine love, while Maria tells
of a desperate young woman who seeks consolation in the arms of another
man after the loss of her child. And Mary Shelley's Matilda - suppressed
for over a century - tells the story of a woman alienated from society
by the incestuous passion of her father. Humane, compassionate and
highly controversial, these stories demonstrate the strongly original
genius of their authors.
Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-97) was an educational, political and
feminist writer who early in her life worked as a companion, teacher
and governess. In 1788 she settled in London and began to work for the
publisher Joseph Johnson, through whom she became part of the radical
set that included Paine, Blake, Godwin and Fuseli. Her great work A
Vindication of the Rights of Women was published in 1792. She lived in
Paris during the French Revolution and had child with Gilbert Imlay,
who subsequently deserted her. Following her return to London and
attempted suicide, she married Godwin in 1797 shortly before the birth
of her daughter Mary Shelley. She died in child birth.
Mary Shelley (1797-1851) was born in London. In 1814 she met and
fell in love with the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, and in July they
eloped to the continent. They married in 1816 after Shelley's first
wife committed suicide. They had four children, but only Percy
Florence survived. They returned to London from Italy upon Shelley's
death by drowning in 1822. Her best known work is Frankenstein.
Janet Todd is a Professor at Glasgow University. She has edited
Aphra Behn's Oroonoko, The Rover and Other Works and Love-Letters
between a Nobleman and his Sister for Penguin Classics.
