Mathilda
Mary Shelley’s Mathilda, the story of one woman’s existential struggle after learning of her father’s desire for her, has been identified as Shelley’s most important work after Frankenstein. The two texts share many characteristics, besides authorship and contemporaneity: both concern parental abandonment; both contribute to the Gothic form through themes of incest, insanity, suicidality, monstrosity,…
Mary, A Fiction and The Wrongs of Woman, or Maria
Mary Wollstonecraft wrote these two novellas at the beginning and end of her years of writing and political activism. Though written at different times, they explore some of the same issues: ideals of femininity as celebrated by the cult of sensibility, the unequal education of women, and domestic subjugation. Mary counters the contemporary trend of…
On Editing Mary Shelley’s Mathilda
[Michelle Faubert, editor of our new edition of Mary Shelley’s Mathilda, shares her thoughts on editing the text.] Editing Mary Shelley’s Mathilda (1819; first published 1959) for Broadview Press has been hugely exciting for me, not least because I transcribed it from the manuscript. In 1959, Elizabeth Nitchie first transcribed Mathilda for publication from a…
A Broadview Summer Listening List
It’s summer time; the sun is shining; your eyes need a break from months of staring at a screen. But that doesn’t mean you can’t catch up on all the new things we’ve got going on at Broadview! We’re lucky enough to have had some of our recent books covered on excellent podcasts. So many…