New Publication: Mary Shelley (Key Popular Women Writers Series)

Written by Dr. Susan Civale, Canterbury Christ Church University

The book offers a feminist reappraisal of the writing of Mary Shelley that includes but also goes beyond Frankenstein (1818), considering a selection of her novels, short fiction, poetry, and travel writing published across the full length of a career that spanned nearly three decades. 

The book includes the following chapters:

Chapter 1: The Parent-Child Relationship: Frankenstein (1818) and Lodore (1835)

Chapter 2: Writing from the Brink: Matilda (c. 1819–20) and The Last Man (1826)

Chapter 3: Identity and Imposture in Shelley’s Short Fiction

Chapter 4: The Popular Poetess and the Literary Annual: Shelley's Poetic Contributions to The Keepsake (1830–1838)

Chapter 5: Mary Shelley’s Travel Writing

Conclusion: Mary Shelley’s Afterlives (in Twenty-First Century Graphic Novels, Children's Literature, and Video Games)

Dr. Susan Civale is Reader in Romanticism at Canterbury Christ Church University, and Co-director for the International Centre for Victorian Women Writers (ICVWW). Her research interests include life writing, women’s writing, gothic literature, and authorial and textual afterlives, both in the ‘long’ nineteenth century and beyond. She is the author of Romantic Women’s Life Writing: Reputation and Afterlife (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2019).