Mary Shelley and Europe


Book Description

Mary Shelley in Europe studies the European background of Mary Shelley's works and their reception. This two-fold approach is inspired by Mary Shelley dans son oeuvre, Jean de Palacio's seminal work that has remained untranslated in English. The essays in the volume bring new insights on editing and establishing the canon of Mary Shelley's works; they investigate her interest in European literature, history and landscape; and they highlight her unique partnership with the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. In considering Mary Shelley's European and world-wide reception the authors adopt an interdisciplinary approach and explore both the 'Frankenstein myth' and the 'Mary Shelley myth' in drama, contemporary media and visual culture. At a time when literary studies adopt a transnational perspective and focus on hybrid identities, these essays show that Mary Shelley's work appears surprisingly contemporary.




Mary Shelley and Europe


Book Description

Mary Shelley in Europe studies the European background of Mary Shelley's works and their reception. This two-fold approach is inspired by Mary Shelley dans son oeuvre, Jean de Palacio's seminal work that has remained untranslated in English. The essays in the volume bring new insights on editing and establishing the canon of Mary Shelley's works; they investigate her interest in European literature, history and landscape; and they highlight her unique partnership with the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. In considering Mary Shelley's European and world-wide reception the authors adopt an interdisciplinary approach and explore both the 'Frankenstein myth' and the 'Mary Shelley myth' in drama, contemporary media and visual culture. At a time when literary studies adopt a transnational perspective and focus on hybrid identities, these essays show that Mary Shelley's work appears surprisingly contemporary.




In Search of Mary Shelley


Book Description

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.










The Reception of P. B. Shelley in Europe


Book Description

The widespread and culturally significant impact of Percy Bysshe Shelley's writings in Europe constitutes a particularly interesting case for a reception study because of the variety of responses they evoked. If radical readers cherished the 'red' Shelley, others favoured the lyrical poet, whose work was, like Byron's, anthologized and set to music. His major dramatic works, The Cenci and Prometheus Unbound, inspired numerous fin-de-siècle and expressionist dramatists and producers from Paris to Moscow. Shelley was read by, and influenced, the novelist Stendhal, the political theorist Engels, the Spanish symbolist Jiménez, and the Russian modernist poet Akhmatova. This exciting collection of essays by an international team of leading scholars considers translations, critical and biographical reviews, fictionalizations of his life, and other creative responses. It probes into transnational cross-currents to demonstrate the depth of Shelley's impact on European culture since his death in 1822. It will be an indispensable research resource for academics, critics, and writers with interests in Romanticism and its legacies.




The Vampyre


Book Description

A Short and Chilling Romantic tale of the Legends of the Vampire “In many parts of Greece it is considered as a sort of punishment after death, for some heinous crime committed whilst in existence, that the deceased is not only doomed to vampyrise, but compelled to confine his infernal visitations solely to those beings he loved most while upon earth—those to whom he was bound by ties of kindred and affection.—A supposition alluded to in the "Giaour.” ― John William Polidori, The Vampyre; a Tale William Polidori is credited with creating the literary genre of romantic vampire fiction with his short story, The Vampyre. When Aubrey, a young Englishman, meets the mysterious Lord Ruthven, he discovers a horrible secret that threatens everyone he knows and loves. This Xist Classics edition has been professionally formatted for e-readers with a linked table of contents. This eBook also contains a bonus book club leadership guide and discussion questions. We hope you’ll share this book with your friends, neighbors and colleagues and can’t wait to hear what you have to say about it. Xist Publishing is a digital-first publisher. Xist Publishing creates books for the touchscreen generation and is dedicated to helping everyone develop a lifetime love of reading, no matter what form it takes




Mary Shelley


Book Description

Mary Shelley's own life was as dramatic as her fiction. Even had she not (at the age of 19) authored Frankenstein, one of the greatest horror fables in literature, she would be crucial to the study of Romanticism, as the daughter of two of the great radical thinkers of the day, William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft (who died following Mary's birth); and as the second Mrs Percy Bysshe Shelley, her companion for that stormy stay at Byron's Geneva villa in 1816 - the 'haunted summer' that begat Frankenstein. Drawing on unexplored sources, Miranda Seymour's hugely acclaimed biography penetrates the myth to offer the fullest, richest portrait of this extraordinary woman. 'Mary Shelley is the most dazzling biography of a female writer to have come my way for an entire decade.' Financial Times 'Brilliant and enthralling, this portrait illuminates Mary's life in many unexpected ways.' Independent on Sunday 'Miranda Seymour has vivid narrative gifts and a perceptive understanding of the main personalities.' New York Times Book Review 'A thoughtfully considered and exceptionally lifelike portrait of a complex and often misunderstood character.' Los Angeles Times 'A harrowing life, wonderfully retold.' Washington Post Book World 'A splendid biography.' New Yorker




Religion Around Mary Shelley


Book Description

Explores Mary Shelley as an important religious thinker of the Romantic period. Analyzes her creative engagement with contemporary religious controversies and uncovers a belief system that was both influenced by and profoundly different from those of her male Romantic counterparts.




The Shelley-Byron Circle and the Idea of Europe


Book Description

This book investigates how Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, and their circle understood the idea of Europe. What geographical, cultural, and ideological concepts did they associate with the term? What does this tell us about politics and identity in early nineteenth-century Britain? In addressing these questions, Paul Stock challenges prevailing nationalist interpretations of Romanticism, but without falling prey to imprecise alternative notions of cosmopolitanism or "world citizenship." Instead, his book accounts for both the transnational and the local in Romantic writing, reassessing the period in terms of more complex, multi-layered identity politics.