Mary Shelley (1797‐1851), daughter of the novelist Mary Wollstonecraft and the radical philosopher William Godwin, married the revolutionary and poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. Yet Mary's work is often overlooked, overshadowed perhaps by her husband's rebellious personality (he was expelled, like many great thinkers, from Oxford University for advocating political unrest) and his poetic masterpieces such as Prometheus Unbound and The Mask of Anarchy. Her work also had to contend with the popular fiction of Jane Austen (Northanger Abbey and the first edition of Frankenstein were both published in 1818).
The couple are undoubtedly the best‐known married partnership of what is often termed the “second generation” of romantic writers. Both came from extremely privileged backgrounds and moved within a circle of friends that included Lord Byron. Mary Shelley traveled Europe extensively, notably Italy, France and Switzerland. These travels inspired many of her works, including the infamous novel Frankenstein, which is said to be set in the Jura mountains that border France and Switzerland.
The encyclopedia offers an interesting entry on Shelley's most famous work, detailing the circumstances from which the story arose – a nightmare after an evening with Byron challenging the “gang” to come up with the most terrifying ghost story they could each imagine. Clearly Shelley's imagination went into overdrive and the story of Frankenstein sprang forth. It is the story of an insatiably ambitious inventor, who scientifically creates a human life and then rejects it, due to the horror of its appearance and strength. As it realises consciousness it becomes a vengeful monster with disastrous consequences. This novel is, not surprisingly, studied widely in schools and universities all over the world for the themes it raises about human nature. It remains strangely relevant today with the birth of genetic engineering.
The strength of this volume, however, lies in the depth of detail on Mary's other prolific writings which include novels (The Last Man being perhaps the second best‐known work), letters, poems, short stories, historical biographies and travel writing. In addition, there are entries on all manner of places, philosophies and people that Mary Shelley came into contact with or that influenced her writing. These range from Albion House, the name of the Shelleys' house in Marlow, Buckinghamshire, to Ziam, Constans, a character in one of Mary Shelley's lesser‐known novels, The Evil Eye.
This book closes with a useful appendix on the quotations Mary Shelley uses from other works, a bibliography and an index (useful and extensive cross‐referencing is also used throughout). The encyclopedia is perhaps primarily a text for an academic library, being rather a specialised area of English literature, but nevertheless a worthy addition to a reference collection on the period of romantic literature and thinking. Since its focus is on Mary Shelley, the most famous woman of romanticism, the entries on the broader issues of that period's history, politics and literature are excellent. Aside from this, there is an argument that our country's libraries should acknowledge a woman whose work has penetrated and challenged our society's psyche so profoundly. This is a woman who demonstrates an impressive level of political awareness outside the domestic realms of her contemporary Jane Austen and the two should stand side by side in an academic library's collection.
