Mary Shelley: Her Life, Her Fiction, Her Monsters [Hardcover]

Anne Kostelanetz Mellor (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: 1988

This innovative study gives a powerfully argued view of Mary Shelley's life and works, using not only her masterpiece, but also The Last Man and other fiction. Drawing on unpublished archival material, Anne Mellor studies the relationships between Mary Shelley, her husband Percy Bysshe Shelley, and other key personalities in her circle. Throughout the book, the ways in which Mary Shelley's life and writings voice a distinct personal philosophy about the bourgeois nuclear family are unfolded. Not just a horror story, Frankenstein is a warning about parents who fail to care for their children, when Shelley's ideal family' is absent, and when scientists refuse to take responsibility for their discoveries. At the same time, she emerges as a critic of the romantic ideology that elevates the creative process above the created product.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Review

. . . the fullest account of Mary Shelley we have or are likely to have . ..
–Nina Auerbach --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 296 pages
• Publisher: Methuen, Inc.; 1st edition (1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0416017614
• ISBN-13: 978-0416017618
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,118,613 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent resource on Mary Shelley and Frankenstein, June 22, 1996

By A Customer

This review is from: Mary Shelley: Her Life, Her Fiction, Her Monsters (Paperback)

This book is an excellent text for the study of Mary Shelley and Frankenstein. It will fascinate those interested in the life of Mary Shelley, students studying Frankenstein, and those interested in learning about an 19th Century woman writer, who wrote a novel about a monster that has since become a universal archetype of isolation and societal rejection. In this text, it is demonstrated how events in Mary Shelley's life, her fears of motherhood, and her study of current philosophic and scientific theories all contributed to the development of the novel. Mary Shelley is proven to be an intelligent and complex woman writer of the Romantic Literary tradition

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Mary Shelley: Her Life, Her Fiction, Her Monsters, December 24, 2010

By 

Sally K. Severino (New Mexico) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Mary Shelley: Her Life, Her Fiction, Her Monsters (Paperback)

This is an excellent biography of Mary Shelley, author of the first science fiction novel, Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus.

At the outset, biographer Anne K. Mellor provides a helpful and thorough chronology of Mary Shelley's life from her birth in 1797 to her death in 1851.

Mellor then proceeds to write a scholarly, fascinating, well organized, and clearly written study of Mary Shelley's life.

I read it because of my interest in Frankenstein as a study in the effects of unrepaired shame on human development. Mellor devotes several chapters to Frankenstein including: Making a Monster, My Hideous Progeny, and Revising Frankenstein. Mellor also includes an Appendix: Percy Shelley's Revision of the Manuscript of Frankenstein.

As Mellor notes in her Preface, "Frankenstein is rapidly becoming an essential text for our exploration of female consciousness and literary technique."

I highly recommend this book.

5 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful Piece of Literary Criticism, November 13, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Mary Shelley: Her Life, Her Fiction, Her Monsters (Paperback)

This book captures every aspect of Mary Shelley's life that evolved into her fictive imagination. The readers are introduced to much less popular works such as The Last Man, Lodore and Mathilda which actually give a unique perspective to Frankenstein. For myself there were some places I felt I was given too many examples, I had already figured out Mellor's point several paragraphs before, but the book makes every possible attempt to explain the novels so that everyone understands.