A young woman recounts her tragic life story to her friend, a young man familiar with loss. Following her mother’s death during childbirth, Mathilda was abandoned by her father and raised by her wealthy aunt. When her father came back into her life, however, events unfolded which irrevocably disrupted any normalcy she had reclaimed. Mathilda is a novella by Mary Shelley.

Michelle Faubert is Associate Professor of English at the University of Manitoba. She is the editor of the Broadview Edition of Mary Wollstonecraft’s Mary, a Fiction and Maria.

“The Broadview Press edition of Mathilda fills a gap in Romantic studies. The long-suppressed work (Godwin refused to return the manuscript) wasn’t published until 1959, and its immediate critical reception was almost entirely biographical. Michelle Faubert’s astute introduction to this new edition offers a scrupulous account of the work’s critical reception and opens new possibilities for understanding what she calls a ‘purgatorial text.’ The judicious appendices, a hallmark of Broadview Editions, situate Shelley’s novella in the contexts of its immediate intertexts, of its central place in contemporaneous suicide debates, and, crucially, of representations of incest and the Gothic. A paperback edition makes a hitherto neglected text widely available. The sophisticated editorial care evident throughout ensures that this will also serve as the standard scholarly edition.” ―Alan Vardy, Hunter College, City University of New York

“Michelle Faubert’s beautifully edited version of Mathilda is the first widely available edition to come from a transcription of Shelley’s original 1819 fair copy. Faubert’s lucid and elegant introduction situates Mathilda in the context of Shelley’s earlier Frankenstein (1818) and later novella The Mourner (1830) and discusses its troubled publication history and recent critical reception. Faubert provides a wide range of well-chosen supplementary material to complement both novice and returning readers’ appreciation for and study of Mathilda. This edition should become the standard classroom text of Shelley’s important, engaging, and notorious second novel.” ―Katherine Montwieler, University of North Carolina Wilmington