A Mary Shelley Encyclopedia

Mary Shelley has only recently emerged from the shadows of her famous parents, Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin, and her husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley. Today, Frankenstein (1818, 1831) is one of the most popular classroom texts in high school and college, and her other works are attracting renewed attention. These works reveal much about the Romantic literary period and Shelley’s ongoing development as a writer. In addition to her novels, she wrote short stories, poems and dramas. These texts illustrate the difficulties of a shifting literary marketplace, while her travel writings illuminate her rich personal experiences and keen intellect. This reference is a comprehensive guide to her life and career. Included in the volume are hundreds of alphabetically arranged entries. Readers of Shelley’s texts can garner more information about her works, friends, relatives, residences, fictional characters, allusions and much more. Some of these entries briefly identify and contextualize their topics, while others offer more extensive discussions. Many of the entries cite sources of further information, and the volume closes with a bibliography. The work is fully cross-referenced and includes an appendix, which discusses the sources for Shelley’s quotations as well as a detailed index.