The Novels and Selected Works of Mary Shelley

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General Editors: Nora Crook with Pamela Clemit
Consulting Editor: Betty T Bennett

The Pickering Masters

This is the first collection of all Mary Shelley's novels, travel-writing, journalism and prefaces. The edition makes a major contribution to the study of nineteenth-century English literature.

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797–1851) was the only child of the famous radicals, Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin. In 1814 she eloped with, and later married, Percy Bysshe Shelley. After his death in 1822 she returned to London where she pursued a professional writing career. Her most famous work is Frankenstein (1818), but she was author also of six other novels: Matilda (1819), Valperga (1823), The Last Man (1826), Perkin Warbeck (1830), Lodore (1835) and Falkner (1837). She also wrote for various magazines and journals (including the Westminster Review and the London Magazine). She wrote two works of travel-writing - History of a Six Weeks' Tour (1817) and Rambles in Germany and Italy (1844).

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is the single most widely read work of the English Romantic period, yet the author's other works – including five novels, two travel books, essays, and reviews – remain relatively unknown. Well received in their own era, they gained for Mary Shelley the reputation of an important, imaginative, and at times, controversial, author.

Contents

Volume 1

Frankenstein (1818)

There seems to be no end to finding new interpretations, sources and relevance for Mary Shelley's celebrated first novel, each edition brings to light something not generally known before. This one draws on the work of its predecessors of the last 25 years. It follows modern practice in printing the first 1818 edition, appending the author's preface and all substantive variants in the 1831 edition. It reproduces Mary Shelley's first attempt at revision (from the `Thomas' copy) and is the first edition to collate the neglected second (1823) edition with 1818 and 1831. Often described as a page-by-page reprint of the 1818 edition, careful scrutiny shows the 1823 text to be a complete resetting of it. Thus it contains many small but significant alterations to the 1818 edition. Often these alterations were thought to have been among those made by Mary Shelley in 1831, but evidence suggests that it was her father, William Godwin, who originated them.

Volume 2

Matilda (1819), Dramas, Reviews, Prefaces and Notes

This volume contains Mary Shelley's only completed novella, Matilda; two mythological dramas, Proserpine and Midas; a selection of essays and reviews 1823–32; and the prefaces and notes to her editions of Shelley's poetry and prose. Matilda is a tale of incestuous love between father and daughter. It was composed in late 1819 and remained a manuscript throughout her lifetime. In this edition Matilda is newly transcribed from the manuscript, and the rough draft, entitled `The Fields of Fancy' is printed in full. The verse dramas Proserpine and Midas, transcribed from the manuscript fair copies, present an adaptation of episodes from Ovid, probably designed for a young audience, and includes lyrics by Shelley. Mary Shelley's prefaces and notes to her editions of Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1839), and Essays, Letters from Abroad, Translations and Fragments, By Percy Bysshe Shelley (1840) show her pioneering contribution to Shelley scholarship.

Volume 3

Valperga (1823)

Originally called Castruccio, Prince of Lucca, Valperga is an intelligent study in sexual politics. It also contains some of Mary Shelley's most beautiful and impassioned writing. It was praised on publication for its convincing recreation of the period (Mary Shelley emulated Scott and foreshadowed George Eliot in the proficiency of her research and the portraits of its two female protagonists, though the heretic Beatrice shocked the Blackwood's reviewer). Yet, according to Mary Shelley, `it never had fair play' and (except for a facsimile) has never been republished. This edition appends a transcript of seventeen pages of surviving manuscript, and the annotations make use of the editor's study of Mary Shelley's research notes.

Volume 4

The Last Man (1826)

The Last Man follows Frankenstein as one of the earliest examples of science fiction in English. It also presents characters who can be seen, in some of their aspects, to resemble certain members of the Shelley circle. The narrative begins in the late 21st century in an England which has become a republic, focusing at first on the conflicting worlds of the domestic and political. But as the plague takes hold and spreads relentlessly, the novel's view expands to encompass Europe and the world scene. Dark, even existential in its mood, The Last Man shows the demise of the human race highlighted against its greatest achievement as the ever decreasing band of survivors make their way across the Alps to the warm cities of the South.

Volume 5

The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck, A Romance (1830)

Mary Shelley's fourth novel, opens on 22nd August 1485, the day Richard III died in battle at Bosworth Field. Centered on the figure of the pretender who claimed to be the younger of the two princes smothered in the Tower at the order of their famous uncle, this historical romance follows the course of Warbeck's eventful career, as he struggles to assert his right to England's throne. By entertaining her `belief that Perkin was, in reality, the lost Duke of York', Mary Shelley mounts a challenge to dramatists, chroniclers, and historians dismissive of her claims. In her hands, the story becomes an instrument not only for questioning the standard accounts of Warbeck's life but also for examining the issue that preoccupied her contemporaries as England entered the Age of Reform. This edition includes the corrections and marginal notations made by Mary Shelley in the `Abinger' copy of the first edition.

Volume 6

Lodore (1835)

Lodore sees Mary Shelley abandon Gothic fiction and historical romance in order to focus on human relationships, in recognisable contemporary settings. The novel takes its title from the Byronic hero, but much of the narrative and psychological interest derives from the development of his estranged wife and their daughter, the destruction of the family unit and the slow progress towards regeneration. The action moves from England to Wales, America and Continental Europe, in a series of locations that allow for contrast not only in physical description, but also in manners, political institutions, moral values and national characteristics. If Lodore's central theme is love in all its forms, the novel's structure enables Mary Shelley to introduce a wide variety of topical issues - from education to slavery to allusions and concerns. This is a work rooted in the Romantic period, but one which also anticipates the novels of the Victorian age.

Volume 7

Falkner (1837)

Mary Shelley's final novel tells of the bond of fidelity between John Falkner, the passionate and self-divided hero, and his adopted daughter, who discovers his dissolute past but remains loyal. Mary Shelley's portrayal of Falkner's adventures in Europe is indebted to episodes in the lives of her friends, Lord Byron and Edward John Trelawney, but her investigation of extreme psychological states is modelled on the introspective fictions of her father, William Godwin.

Volume 8

Travel Writing, Index of Places and Names

This volume contains Mary Shelley's portion of the volume History of a Six Weeks' Tour (1817), written with Percy Bysshe Shelley, and based on their elopement to the Continent in 1814; and her recollections of travelling with her son and his friends in search of improved health, Rambles in Germany and Italy (1844). This edition of Rambles in Germany and Italy provides much of its historical information from the Handbooks for Travellers series begun by London publisher John Murray in the 1830s, allowing the reader to understand Mary Shelley's journey's and observations within the context of the travel conditions unique to the mid-nineteenth century. Previous editions of History of a Six Weeks' Tour have placed this work within the context of P B Shelley's life and correspondence, but this is the first edition to stress Mary Shelley's authorship and its relation to her creative development. An appendix de-attributes the satirical 'Mounseer Nongtongpaw' (1808), though the verses are still evidence of her childhood involvement with William Godwin's Juvenile Library.

Reviews

‘It is meticulously edited by an Anglo-American team of scholars, led by the formidable Betty Bennett.... It could not be done better than it has been done here, as a product of the greatest care and scholarship.’
– Claire Tomalin, The Times Literary Supplement

‘Crook's work will stand for decades as the definitive scholarly edition. Essential for graduate students and researchers.’
– J T Lynch, CHOICE

Related titles

• Mary Shelley's Literary Lives and Other Writings
• Varieties of Female Gothic

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