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The Life and Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Volume II (of 2): Volume 2
Reproduction of the The Life and Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Volume II (of 2) by Florence A. Thomas Marshall
- GenresHistory
232 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1889
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
December 26, 2025
I doubt Mary would appreciate her personal letters and journal entries to be read by the public. Even 200 years after. Still, I hope she forgives us and I hope she can see how much love people still have for her. The more I read her opinions, her feelings, the closer I feel to her. I don’t know what right I have to feel like this about a person I’ve never met but I cannot help it. Mary is able to put into words my own feelings and thoughts despite the different age, the different worlds and experiences. I wish she hadn’t suffered this much, I wish life had been kinder with her.
F. Marshall explanations and opinions have to be taken, as always when we read about other people’s lives, with a pinch of salt. Though his willingness to defend Mary reputation is to be appreciated.
While my annoyance for Trelawny, Godwin, Jane and Hogg has been reinforced, the reading of this second volume has been a surprise. The public believes firmly to know what Mary would have wanted as a writer, how she felt about her works, her success, but by comparing what you can read in here and seeing how the world perceives her today we can say that there is a big misunderstanding. She was a very shy, often indolent, and introvert person. The last entry of her journal presented in this volume (October 21, 1838) has been particularly enlightening for me.
The more I read about them, the more I believe that Percy and Mary Shelley are the most misunderstood people of the 1800’s.
F. Marshall explanations and opinions have to be taken, as always when we read about other people’s lives, with a pinch of salt. Though his willingness to defend Mary reputation is to be appreciated.
While my annoyance for Trelawny, Godwin, Jane and Hogg has been reinforced, the reading of this second volume has been a surprise. The public believes firmly to know what Mary would have wanted as a writer, how she felt about her works, her success, but by comparing what you can read in here and seeing how the world perceives her today we can say that there is a big misunderstanding. She was a very shy, often indolent, and introvert person. The last entry of her journal presented in this volume (October 21, 1838) has been particularly enlightening for me.
The more I read about them, the more I believe that Percy and Mary Shelley are the most misunderstood people of the 1800’s.
March 15, 2023
Offering a fascinating insight into the mind of Mary Shelley, with curated extracts of her journal accompanying some of her correspondence to some of her friends and colleagues. This is a reprint of the two volume 1899 publication curated by Florence Marshall. One always has to be cautious when reading the letters of someone like Mary Shelley. While her letters were private, given that she was more than aware that she had become a public figure, it was clearly in her mind that her letters may, at some stage, be made public. She therefore, at times, seemed to write for a much broader audience than the person she wrote to. There are therefore many ways her letters can be read. That is the joy that awaits the reader.
This second volume of letters covers the period following the death of her husband Percy Shelley in July of 1822, until her own death in 1851, tragically young, from a brain tumour. She was only 53. In 1822, she had already written her greatest work, Frankenstein, and the creature of her creation seemed to haunt her throughout life, there are shadowed references to it throughout her letters and journal.
She was a widow and a mother who worked tirelessly to provide a living for her son, all while trying to support a father that was unable to support himself, carrying a burden which no young woman should have to cope with. Her own financial pressures were never far from her mind, as she struggled to help her father evade the worst of his own mismanagement of his financial affairs. Despite the difficulties that were the legacy of her parents and her husband, her respect for them shines through.
More than anything, however, the letters show a woman constrained - constrained by financial pressures as her father-in-law refused to provide a meaningful income for Mary and her child following her husband's death, constrained by her own choices, as her decision to elope with Percy while he was still married to another woman painted her in a notoriety she was never able to wash away, constrained by the fame of her parents, Mary Wollstonecraft having also been condemned by the social mores of her time for having had a child out of wedlock. She wrote, with keen awareness: 'Years ago, when a man died, the worms ate him; now a new set of worms feed on the carcase of the scandal he leaves behind him and grow fat on the world’s love of tittle-tattle.' She was the morsel that tittle-tattle chose to feed on. Much of what she did was an attempt to mitigate this damage, and shield her son from it.
Mary Shelley was all to aware of these limitations which constrained her - to the point where they stifled her voice, 'abused by pretended friends for my lukewarmness' as she put it, on the subject of the question of women's rights. Her letters show that there was so many things holding her back from being able to speak freely.
The reader is left wondering - had she the complete and total freedom to write as she chose, what more could this remarkable writer have written?
This second volume of letters covers the period following the death of her husband Percy Shelley in July of 1822, until her own death in 1851, tragically young, from a brain tumour. She was only 53. In 1822, she had already written her greatest work, Frankenstein, and the creature of her creation seemed to haunt her throughout life, there are shadowed references to it throughout her letters and journal.
She was a widow and a mother who worked tirelessly to provide a living for her son, all while trying to support a father that was unable to support himself, carrying a burden which no young woman should have to cope with. Her own financial pressures were never far from her mind, as she struggled to help her father evade the worst of his own mismanagement of his financial affairs. Despite the difficulties that were the legacy of her parents and her husband, her respect for them shines through.
More than anything, however, the letters show a woman constrained - constrained by financial pressures as her father-in-law refused to provide a meaningful income for Mary and her child following her husband's death, constrained by her own choices, as her decision to elope with Percy while he was still married to another woman painted her in a notoriety she was never able to wash away, constrained by the fame of her parents, Mary Wollstonecraft having also been condemned by the social mores of her time for having had a child out of wedlock. She wrote, with keen awareness: 'Years ago, when a man died, the worms ate him; now a new set of worms feed on the carcase of the scandal he leaves behind him and grow fat on the world’s love of tittle-tattle.' She was the morsel that tittle-tattle chose to feed on. Much of what she did was an attempt to mitigate this damage, and shield her son from it.
Mary Shelley was all to aware of these limitations which constrained her - to the point where they stifled her voice, 'abused by pretended friends for my lukewarmness' as she put it, on the subject of the question of women's rights. Her letters show that there was so many things holding her back from being able to speak freely.
The reader is left wondering - had she the complete and total freedom to write as she chose, what more could this remarkable writer have written?
November 19, 2018
Four stars for the florid Victorian prose, which not everybody will appreciate. This biography is not to be relied on as an accurate biography of Mary Shelley, because her daughter-in-law suppressed a lot of material that would have hurt Percy Shelley's reputation. But there are a lot of letters and details of interest.
Volume II covers the years of Mary Shelley's widowhood.
Volume II covers the years of Mary Shelley's widowhood.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews