In search of Mary Shelley / Fiona Sampson.
2018
PR5398 .S26 2018 (Mapit)
Available at General Collection
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Details
Title
In search of Mary Shelley / Fiona Sampson.
Author
Sampson, Fiona, author.
Edition
First Pegasus books hardcover edition.
ISBN
9781681777528 (hardcover)
1681777525 (hardcover)
1681777525 (hardcover)
Published
New York : Pegasus Books, [2018]
Language
English
Description
xii, 304 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color) ; 24 cm
Call Number
PR5398 .S26 2018
Dewey Decimal Classification
823/.7 B
Summary
We know the facts of Mary Shelley's life in some detail--the death of her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, within days of her birth; the upbringing in the house of her father, William Godwin, in a house full of radical thinkers, poets, philosophers, and writers; her elopement, at the age of seventeen, with Percy Shelley; the years of peripatetic travel across Europe that followed. But there has been no literary biography written this century, and previous books have ignored the real person--what she actually thought and felt and why she did what she did--despite the fact that Mary and her group of second-generation Romantics were extremely interested in the psychological aspect of life. In this probing narrative, Fiona Sampson pursues Mary Shelley through her turbulent life, much as Victor Frankenstein tracked his monster across the arctic wastes. Sampson has written a book that finally answers the question of how it was that a nineteen-year-old came to write a novel so dark, mysterious, anguished, and psychologically astute that it continues to resonate two centuries later. No previous biographer has ever truly considered this question, let alone answered it.
We know the facts of Mary Shelley's life in some detail, but previous books have ignored the real person-- what she actually thought and felt and why she did what she did. Sampson pursues Mary Shelley through her turbulent life, and answers the question of how it was that a nineteen-year-old came to write a novel so dark, mysterious, anguished, and psychologically astute that it continues to resonate two centuries later. -- Adapted from jacket.
We know the facts of Mary Shelley's life in some detail, but previous books have ignored the real person-- what she actually thought and felt and why she did what she did. Sampson pursues Mary Shelley through her turbulent life, and answers the question of how it was that a nineteen-year-old came to write a novel so dark, mysterious, anguished, and psychologically astute that it continues to resonate two centuries later. -- Adapted from jacket.
Bibliography, etc. Note
Includes bibliographical references (pages 251-294) and index.
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Table of Contents
Part One: The Instruments of Life
The Instruments of Life
Learning to Look
Through a Door Partly Opened
Elopement
Becoming a Couple
At Villa Diodati
A Young writer
Emigrants
Part Two: Borne Away by the Waves
Le rêve est fini
The Mona Lisa Smile
Coda.
The Instruments of Life
Learning to Look
Through a Door Partly Opened
Elopement
Becoming a Couple
At Villa Diodati
A Young writer
Emigrants
Part Two: Borne Away by the Waves
Le rêve est fini
The Mona Lisa Smile
Coda.