A Life with Mary Shelley

by Barbara Johnson

In 1980, deconstructive and psychoanalytic literary theorist Barbara Johnson wrote an essay on Mary Shelley for a colloquium on the writings of Jacques Derrida. The essay marked the beginning of Johnson's lifelong interest in Shelley as well as her first foray into the field of "women's studies," one of whose commitments was the rediscovery and analysis of works by women writers previously excluded from the academic canon. Indeed, the last book Johnson completed before her death was Mary Shelley and Her Circle, published here for the first time. Shelley was thus the subject for Johnson's beginning in feminist criticism and also for her end.

It is surprising to recall that when Johnson wrote her essay, only two of Shelley's novels were in print, critics and scholars having mostly dismissed her writing as inferior and her career as a side effect of her famous husband's. Inspired by groundbreaking feminist scholarship of the seventies, Johnson came to pen yet more essays on Shelley over the course of a brilliant but tragically foreshortened career. So much of what we know and think about Mary Shelley today is due to her and a handful of scholars working just decades ago.

In this volume, Judith Butler and Shoshana Felman have united all of Johnson's published and unpublished work on Shelley alongside their own new, insightful pieces of criticism and those of two other peers and fellow pioneers in feminist theory, Mary Wilson Carpenter and Cathy Caruth. The book thus evolves as a conversation amongst key scholars of shared intellectual inclinations while closing the circle on Johnson's life and her own fascination with the life and circle of another woman writer, who, of course, also happened to be the daughter of a founder of modern feminism.

Genres: Nonfiction, Biography, Memoir, Academic, Feminism

231 pages, Hardcover

First published July 16, 2014

About the author

Librarian note: There are other authors with the same name

Barbara Johnson was an American literary critic and translator. She was a Professor of English and Comparative Literature and the Fredric Wertham Professor of Law and Psychiatry in Society at Harvard University. Her scholarship incorporated a variety of structuralist and poststructuralist perspectives—including deconstruction, Lacanian psychoanalysis, and feminist theory—into a critical, interdisciplinary study of literature. As a scholar, teacher, and translator, Johnson helped make the theories of French philosopher Jacques Derrida accessible to English-speaking audiences in the United States at a time when they had just begun to gain recognition in France. Accordingly, she is often associated with the "Yale School" of academic literary criticism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara...

Reviews

[Corey · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is why bookstores need to exist: I came across this slim and powerful book whilst browsing the shelves at the amazing McNally Jackson in SoHo and I know that I would not have done so under other circumstances. Barbara Johnson is an important scholar as she led the way in helping the rest of us understand just how important Mary Shelley and Frankenstein are to the world, that we had been reading the narrative of the infamous Ghost Story contest incorrectly (or perhaps at the very least incompletely), and there was so much more to unpack. This book is lovingly edited by her peers and colleagues, and brings together Johnson's now-famous essays on the subject as well as the manuscript she hastily finished days before she died, entitled "Mary Shelley and Her Circle," a pointed re-wording of the collection of paper and texts housed at the NYPL entitled "Shelley and His Circle". (I know, I think Byron is more important than Percy too.)

The subject matter is complicated, but Johnson's deft writing style makes it accessible, erudite and engaging, as she displaces firm ideas on Mary Shelley, the other Shelley, as well as those in their circle such as Byron and even Polidori, and reminds us that the important concepts and conclusions an academic life dedicated to scholarship richly brought forth can and should live long beyond the individual.

[Jenna Gareis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Five things about A Life with Mary Shelley by Barbara Johnson 📚📚📚📚

1. Oddly personal for such an academic read.
2. If you’re interested in deep thoughts on Mary Shelley this is for you.
3. Very academic but not pretentious.
4. Collection of essays. Dive in and dip out anywhere.
5. I’m grateful for Johnson’s work on Shelley.

[Kyle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Barbara Johnson was a genius.

[Shauna · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book taught me so much about theory, and helped me immensely with my thesis on Frankenstein.