Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley

This volume brings together studies on Mary Wollstonecraft's and Mary Shelley's pioneering life writing by some of the world's most prominent scholars. Wollstonecraft, author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), and Shelley, author of Frankenstein (1818), are now widely regarded as two of the leading writers of the Romantic period. They are both responsible for opening up new possibilities for women in genres traditionally dominated by men. Among the works discussed are Wollstonecraft's Vindication, Letters from Norway, and Maria; or, The Wrongs of Woman; William Godwin's Memoirs of Wollstonecraft; and Shelley's Frankenstein, The Last Man, Ladore, and Rambles in Germany and Italy. The book explores the connections between: mother and daughter, writing and life, and criticism and creation. It offers a new understanding of two important writers, of a literary period, and of emergent modes of life writing.