Customer Reviews

Mary Shelley

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I hvae been reading this biography in fits and starts. It's slow going not because of the writing, which I find skillful and interesting, but because I keep wanting to check facts in Claire's and Mary's letters and journals, as well as in Byron's. My daughter has been reading it straight, and enjoys it on a different level; it seems amazing that these people, so creative, so interesting, were just her age.

Seymour's sympathetic but careful view of Mary Shelley is a refreshing change after the hackjobs and hagiographies of the past century and decades. Claire's troublesome complexities, and Shelley's selfishness, come sharply into focus as they do when one reads the journals and letters. In short, kudos to Miranda Seymour for a job well done.

I have a love/hate relationship with Miranda Seymour's rambling account of the fascinating life of 19th century gothic novelist Mary Shelley. While the subject matter is truly intriguing, Seymour fails to do justice by the long-suffering Mrs. Shelley.

The daughter of a well-known feminist who died in childbirth and a philosopher father, Mary Shelley was destined for tragic greatness. She led a tumultuous life on the edge by 19th century standards - running off with the married Percy Bysshe Shelley at the age of 16 was just the beginning of a lifetime marked with scandal. Mary was a hot topic for gossips throughout Europe in her day. She suffered through her poet husband's infidelities and early death, the deaths of all but one of her children, abusive behavior from family members, and serious money problems. She wrote her greatest work, Frankenstein, at the age of 19, and her career essentially went downhill from there. While she remained a fixture on the fringe of rebel literary society, she never achieved the social acceptance or literary respectability she longed for.

Unfortunately, Miranda Seymour manages to take this whirlwind of a life and bore you to tears with it. Her dry writing style and unpleasant habit of over-examining and revisiting minute details are exasperating. Seymour's prose occasionally takes on a slangy tone that I found mildly annoying and inconsistent. The book has it shining moments of clarity; however, I was often put-off by the author's confusing method of organizing her facts. She jumped back and forth in time and it was often difficult to discern what year in Mary Shelley's life Seymour was trying to discuss. It took me forever to finish "Mary Shelley" (to the point where it became a joke among family and friends) - the only reason I persevered is because I really wanted to know how this fascinating life culminated. Call me a glutton for punishment - even though the presentation was maddeningly dry and poorly organized, Mary Shelley herself is captivating. Perhaps another writer will take up her case more concisely some day.

I disagree with my fellow Michigan man who trashes the subject and its author by mentioning "feminist" as if it is a four-letter word.
Those who didn't find this book difficult to follow will discover a well-researched, well-written biography.

Biographies of romantic-era writers can be very difficult, especially if the writer happens to be a woman. If Victorian-era leaders and historians didn't attempt to wipe out the writer's existence altogether, they at least attempted to wipe out parts of them that were not representative of Victorian, ie ultra-conservative, values.
Little is known about the "mother" of science fiction beyond the most outrageous and scandalous aspects of her life, and even those facts were concealed by Mary Shelley's well-meaning family members for more than 100 years.
For what she's been given, Seymour does an excellent job revealing the history and personality behind this writer and if that's considered feminist, I believe that's complimentary.

This is a well researched, recounting of the life of the gifted and tragic author Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley who wrote the masterpiece, "Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus."

In writing this book, biographer Miranda Seymour had access to authoritative printed editions of all Mary Shelley's correspondence, her short stories, her travel writings, and her five novels. She also visited and got a feel for the places where Mary Shelley lived. As a result, her understanding of Mary Shelley captivates the reader from beginning to end.

This book will be of interest to a broad readership: those who like good biographies; those interested in the Romantic Period in literature (Mary Shelley's circle of friends included her husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Coleridge, Byron, and Keats among others); those interested in the scientific studies of her days (1797-1851) because Mary Shelley's friends included prominent European physicians and scientists; those interested in psychology (Mary and her mother suffered from depression that affected both of their lives in significant ways); those interested in feminism (Mary's mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, was the architect of modern feminism and Mary's contributions are also significant); those interested in studying creativity (Mary was extremely talented); those interested in the history and politics of the time that Mary lived (both played an important role in Mary's life).

I, personally, was interested in this book because "Frankenstein" can be read as a study of the effects of unrepaired shame on human development. I was curious about how Mary's life might have contributed to her portrayal of this. I was not disappointed.

I highly recommend this biography.

Really enjoyed the book. Agree entirely with Mr Sherwood smith. The research was impressive and one has a sense of the biography being a real labour of love. Miranda Seymour has unearthed a lot of new information and as a longtime fan of Mary Shelley, I was surprised to find out how little I actually knew about her life and motivations. I can't recommend it enough.

After reading _Vindication_, the recent biography of Mary Wollstonecraft, the flow of the greater tale naturally leads to the lives of Godwin, his/her daughter and Shelley, and this account of the life of Wollstonecraft's daughter makes excellent continued reading, in the process giving a snapshot of the extraordinary dual careers of the Romantic poet and authoress of Frankenstein. Subjects now seen through the lenses of literary discourse also make a good study of the radical generation suffering the Restoration and its reactionary politics. Indeed the book is a study in class, and associated struggles, especially Shelley's voluntary abandonment of his aristocratic background. The end of Mary Shelley's life is one of the awful constrictions placed on her by Shelley's dreadful family after his death, and the seeming asphyxiation of her earlier radicalism. The magic moment of the birth of Frankenstein is that of the genre of prophecy rightly conceived, although we tend to project our later concerns (e.g. genetic enginering) on what was quite a different psychology and symbolism at work in the genesis of the extraordinary myth.

This book is very thick and very difficult to read. I do not reccomend this biography because of how confusing it is to read. There are too many dates thrown in here and there and not enough simple facts to keep the reader focused. I have read many biographies but this one must surely rank as the most perplexing! Try another biography of this interesting woman.

The subject was interesting to me but the author is not easy to read. Her sentence structure is often convoluted, I found myself having to reread many sentences to grasp the meaning. She also refers to people,dates and places in such a way that it is difficult to keep track of what is going on. Finally, her perspective is very sympathetic to MS, its obvious the author is a feminist.