Mary Shelley's own life was as dramatic as her fiction. Even had she not (at the age of 19) authored "Frankenstein", one of the greatest horror fables in literature, she would be crucial to the study of Romanticism, as the daughter of two of the great radical thinkers of the day, William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft (who died following Mary's birth); and as the second Mrs. Percy Bysshe Shelley, her companion for that stormy stay at Byron's Geneva villa in 1816 - the 'haunted summer' that begat "Frankenstein". Drawing on unexplored sources, Miranda Seymour's hugely acclaimed biography penetrates the myth to offer the fullest, richest portrait of this extraordinary woman. "Mary Shelley is the most dazzling biography of a female writer to have come my way for an entire decade". ("Financial Times"). "Brilliant and enthralling, this portrait illuminates Mary's life in many unexpected ways". ("Independent on Sunday"). "Miranda Seymour has vivid narrative gifts and a perceptive understanding of the main personalities". ("New York Times Book Review"). "A thoughtfully considered and exceptionally lifelike portrait of a complex and often misunderstood character". ("Los Angeles Times").
"A harrowing life, wonderfully retold". ("Washington Post Book World"). "A splendid biography". ("New Yorker").
- ISBN10 0571279678
- ISBN13 9780571279678
- Publish Date 16 June 2011 (first published 26 October 2000)
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 17 August 2022
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Faber & Faber
- Imprint Faber Finds
- Format eBook (OEB)
- Pages 704
- Language English