The Other Mary Shelley: Beyond FrankensteinAudrey Fisch, Anne K. Mellor, Esther H. Schor Oxford University Press, 1993 M07 8 - 312 pages Although Frankenstein is now widely taught in classes on Romanticism, little attention has been paid to the considerable corpus of Mary Shelley's other works. Indeed the excitement of the last decade at feminist approaches to Frankenstein has ironically obscured the persona of its author. This collection of essays, written by a preeminent group of Romantic scholars, sketches a portrait of the "other Mary Shelley": the writer and intellectual who recognized the turbulent interplay among issues of family, gender, and society, and whose writings resonate strongly in the setting of contemporary politics, culture, and feminism. By analyzing a previously neglected body of novels, novellas, reviews, travel writing, essays, letters, biographies, and tales, and by emphasizing Mary Shelley's shrewd assessment of Romanticism, the essays in this volume offer a ground-breaking evaluation of one of the foremost cultural critics of the nineteenth century. |
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Page 60 - The breath whose might I have invoked in song Descends on me; my spirit's bark is driven, Far from the shore, far from the trembling throng Whose sails were never to the tempest given; The massy earth and sphered skies are riven! I am borne darkly, fearfully, afar; Whilst burning through the inmost veil of Heaven, The soul of Adonais, like a star, Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are.
Page 219 - It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the Queen of France, then the dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision.
Page 28 - And in poetry, no less than in life, he is * a beautiful and ineffectual angel, beating in the void his luminous wings in vain.
Page 132 - I sang of the dancing stars, I sang of the daedal Earth, And of Heaven, and the giant wars, And Love, and Death, and Birth...
Page 34 - He is made one with Nature. There is heard His voice in all her music, from the moan Of thunder to the song of night's sweet bird. He is a presence to be felt and known In darkness and in light, from herb and stone ; Spreading itself where'er that Power may move Which has withdrawn his being to its own, Which wields the world with never-wearied love, Sustains it from beneath, and kindles it above.
Page 112 - The good want power but to weep barren tears : The powerful goodness want, — worse need for them : The wise want love : and those who love want wisdom : And all best things are thus confused to ill.
Page 24 - such as Angels weep,' but natural and human tears ; she can boast of no celestial ichor that distinguishes her vital juices from those of prose ; the same human blood circulates through the veins of them both.
Page 24 - It may be safely affirmed that there neither is, nor can be, any essential difference between the language of prose and metrical composition.
Page 121 - I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth.