Mary Wollstonecraft Books

I enjoyed this book, even though it was nothing like anything that I expected. When I first thought of Frankenstein, I saw a creature that was ten feet tall, had bolts in his neck, and was hideously ugly. As I started reading the book, I soon realized that Frankenstein wasn't the name of the creature at all, it was the inventor. Mary Shelley never gave the creature a name, which I thought was odd. She did give a description of him, but I was surprised that it was nothing like the "classical image of Frankenstein." This book was at times hard to follow, and hard to predict. At times, I wondered if this hideous creature was really so bad. Mary Shelley painted this picture of thoughtfulness and actually gave the creature a heart. He was seen as a monster by society, when in fact he had the heart of a human to the reader. This book puts all the movies that I have ever seen about Frankenstein to shame. I started to wonder where the writers of the movie got their information, because they changed one of the most important elements of the book-the creation and the character names.

Frankenstein is a book for all ages. Frankenstein has shown versatility throughout its life. This book has been adapted by its readers to represent all eras. It offers the reader a look not only into the past but also to the near future. With such things as the Human Gnome project in mid-flourish Frankenstein has yet again opened the eyes of its readers. The horror is not in the story but is in the representation it presents to us today. Technology, science, love, and when you throw in the ambition of "Victor" you can closely relate to this tale. Mary Schelley may have never intended for Frankenstein to be a book into the subconscious, or a representation of Marxist ideologies and various other criticism, but it has lend itself to be a perfect subject for study. Frankenstein is truly a book worthy of reading by the most critical of readers.

Since childhhod I always heard the name Frankenstein, but I never knew the story. Up until I read the novel by Mary Shelley, I thought that Frankenstein was the actual monster. Without seeing any of the movies, I had my own mental images of what "Frankenstein" looked like. I always saw pictures or costumes of "Frankenstein" which made him to be this huge, gross monster. Upon reading this novel, I learned that Victor Frankenstein was a creator interested in science and that the monster was his creation. Even after I concluded my reading I did not have a detailed description of the monster. So, I let my imagination run wild based on Victor's response to his creation, the monster's feelings of himslef, and on my previous images. Mary Shelley lets her audience create the monster mentally and pictorally. I also really like the manner in which the story is told. It is told via letters and via conversations that share emotions and the history of the creation and its consequences. The book kept me at the edge of my bed a few times. I could not believe all the hardships and losses encountered by Victor. I also could not believe his disgust with his own creation which he wanted so badly to create. Throughout many points I felt bad for the monster. My pitty for him and his alienation made me think that I was right in thinking that Frankenstien was the monster. He created something he wanted but when he got the job done he did not end up liking the fruits of his labor. I also really enjoyed the novel because of its contradictions. For example, creating life using "dead" parts. There are many different ways to interpret Victor's story and his relationships as well as his thoughts, feelings, and causes of his actions. I thought that the novel was very touching at the end. I really enjoyed reading it , and I'm glad that I now know the story of Frankenstein, and who the real monster is!

There is a certain image that is attached with the name Frankenstien that just makes people all over think of a mad scientists creation that is 10 feet tall with bolts on his neck, green skin, and viens popping out all over. In reality, Mary Shelley had a much different picture painted for readers in her book Frankenstein. Shelley does an amazing job of depicting her story of the creator whose name is Frankenstein, not the creatures, journey through his own psychological difficulties. Her use of imagrey and detail makes it and easy read for high school, college students, old and young alike. It is a classic tale of what goes around, comes around and in the end, you pay for your decisions 10 fold. There is continuious adventure and mystery learking with each turn of a page, and this keeps the reader on the edge. This novel is one of adventure and drama, and I give it a 10!

This edition contains several critical essays about Frankenstein (they follow the actual story). Each essay uses a particular literary theory and applies it to the text 9in front of the essay is a description/analysis of the theory being used). For example, one essay applies Freud's Oedipus Complex and Lacan's Mirror Stage to the development of Victor and the monster. Some of the other theories are Feminism, Marxism and New Historicism. It is interesting to see the novel from all these different perspectives. Expect to see contradictions in interruptions from theory to theory. My only complaint is the selection of essays. Half of them are poorly chosen (ex. Psychoanalysis and Feminism). I could have selected a better selection. The essays can be very confusing; jumping all over the place and trying to cover to many ideas at once. It takes awhile simply to figure out exactly what the author's main point is. You would have better luck simply researching the theory and then applying what you know yourself to the text. Either way, it is a fun exercise and makes one appreciate even more just how amazing a book it truly is.

I read several reviews on this book already, and feel that what I have to say about this book has already been said. I loved this book, and found it to be quite the page turner.

This is a masterpiece - that women especially will find
engaging - being dramatic fictionalized history . It brings to life an important intellectual who had being discarded on the
heap of HIS-tory. The ending is on a level with "Citizen Kane".
and the book has been optioned to make a move. A True work
of Art. Not to be missed william blake, hesse, and joyce
would be proud!

I first read this novel the year it was published and I was taking Prof. Sherwoods creative writing class at Indiana University. We all remember her moment of pure joy and modest disbelief. Frances is talented, tireless and very down to earth. The novel shows her dedication not only to research, but in telling a great story. She first mastered short story writing, and then the novel. I was not surprised to see that this wonderful teacher/writer has published many other novels since I last saw her. Readers won't be disappointed, and I urge them to read her short stories as well.
Chrissy K. McVay - (former student of Prof. Sherwood)
Author of 'Souls of the North Wind'

I knew from history class that Mary Wollstonecraft was an early feminist and the mother of Mary Shelley, the author of "Frankenstein". I had no idea what an incredibly eventful and meaningful life she led until I read this book. Wollstonecraft's childhood was very edgy and anxiety-producing, with an alcoholic and abusive father, and a mother whose own perversity played to his abuse. The reader gets the impression that the mother has to participate in the disfunction to keep a roof over her head. Her loving paternal grandfather, who knew how unreliable his son was, left a will taking care of both his grandaughters and grandson. Wollstonecraft's brother who had been a co-sufferer with his two sisters in the traumatic setting of their childhood, betrayed them by challenging the will in court. He succeeded in overturing the non-traditional will so Wollstonecraft and her sister were left indigent in spite of her grandfather's wishes. In that era, a woman's only option for supporting herself was marriage, witness the desperation of Wollstonecraft's mother. A freethinker, Wollstonecraft continued to walk a tightrope all through life, getting involved sexually with several intellectual leading lights of her age (with results ranging from embarrassing and frustrating to disasterous, just like nowadays), bearing a child out of wedlock, and always lacking in any kind of security in spite of her own prominence in the intellectual arena. The effects of her individualism even resulted in imprisonment in the infamous asylum "Bedlam". This is the amazingly written story of a very interesting woman from history. If you read this, you will definitely not be bored, and you will see what important changes feminism has brought about in a relatively short period of time thanks to people like Mary Wollstonecraft.

I'd have given this book Zero stars, if that had been an option. Sherwood's writing style is crude at best, with some of her sentences making little to no sense at all. There writing flows very poorly (if at all), and the metaphors are some of the worst I've seen. The dialogue is boring and simplistic. I also agree with the reviewers that said this book is unnecessarily vulgar in many places. One of the worst books I've read in a long while.

This is one of the best ways of learning SAT vocab, or simply vocab for your own personal gain. Read the classic work on the right, SAT words are in bold and defined on the left. The real kicker is that words are repeated throughout the book. After seeing words over and over you learn them extremely well. Great Concept, Great Study Aid, Great Book!

These Books are better than other SAT Score raising books. Most of these books are written for the sole purpose of raising your score. Their stories tend to be boring, the writing style is usually adequate. Instead Kaplan, defines SAT words inside great literary works. They are perfect for any student. You can now read a classic book, and Study for the SAT at the same time!

This book is great for those that need to review vocabulary for the SAT's. On the left side is the vocabulary and the definition, on the right is the story using the vocabulary in bold.

We purchased this book to use in our accelerated curriculum since we have a substantial vocabulary unit connected to Frankenstein. However, a few days into the book, we are noticing major departures from Mary Shelley's novel. Kaplan has irresponsibly marketed this book as if it is the original version.

I ordered this book to use with my AP Literature class. I was already teaching Frankenstein, and thought that my students would really benefit from the extra SAT study as well. However, as we are going through the book, I find that the story in this book is very different from the old copies I had always taught from. Key parts of the story are changed, and many of the parts are rearranged. If you are looking for an accurate version of Mary Shelley's story, this may not be the one for you.

I initially decided to read this book for three reasons: 1) I thought it seemed like an interesting story, 2) it appeared on my school's required-reading list, and 3) I was able to find this SAT-prep version of it! 629 essential SAT words appear in bold throughout the main text and are defined along with synonyms on the lefthand opposite page. Other useful vocabulary words that aren't part of the SAT-vocab are underlined as they appear and are included in a glossary at the back of the book. For me, reading vocabulary in context is much more helpful than studying hundreds of words separately through flash cards.

Other reviewers have mentioned that this version is different from other editions of "Frankenstein" that they have seen before. This could be because the 1831 edition of the book is one of the most widely read versions; this SAT-prep version appears to be derived from the original 1818 edition. There are a some key plot differences between the two, but I don't think that Kaplan's use of a lesser-read (and earlier) version of "Frankenstein" detracts from the main purposes of the book: to entertain and to educate.

(Miniture Plot Synopsis): The story opens with a series of letters from a ship's captain, Walton, to his sister Margaret. He is sailing north of the Arctic Circle and his ship becomes surrounded by ice. He notices a man travelling across the ice pursuing a bizarre creature. The man, Victor Frankenstein, ends up coming onboard the ship and relating the strange tale of his life. Walton records Frankenstein's dialogue, which then becomes the narrative of the story.

Frankenstein was a bright and intelligent youth and deeply interested in alchemy. He left his family in Switzerland to study modern science in other countries of Europe. Through much research and effort, he discovered the method of constructing a human being. As to what he created the human out of, Frankenstein keeps these details vague (only mentioning various bones and parts). He specifically intends his creature to be handsome, but once his work is complete and the "creature" wakes up, he is horrified by its disfigured appearance and Frankenstein flees his laboratory. After this, the monster wanders off and later teaches himself how to speak and understand human conversation through observing a group of villagers.

When Frankenstein is hiking in the mountains, he is confronted by the monster. The monster tells him of all of his suffering and confusion and begs him to create a female counterpart that would be just as disfigured as he his, so they could live happily together in seclusion and not bother with humanity any longer. Frankenstein refuses this request, and then the monster plagues his life and the lives of his dear friends and family.

Shelley's style is incredibly descriptive, making it an obvious candidate for Kaplan's series of SAT-prep books. In fact, it's a good thing that I read this version, because I would've been fumbling around with a dictionary the whole time if I read an edition without a vocabulary guide!

The Subjection of Women is an often overlooked classic by one of history's greatest minds. Published at the end of Mill's life, The Subjection brings together all of Mill's most important views on liberty, utility, human nature, and society. It paints a far more accessable ethic than more famous works, such as On Liberty. Mill uses his philosophical views to reach conclusions that were long ahead of his time, and in many ways continue to outpace our understanding of gender and society. This work is arguably the best feminist writing ever, and the best commentary on morality and social evolution.

Today, Mill's work continues to provide us with a framework for understanding social movements such as the gay rights and animal rights movements. Mill shows us how just institutions are vital to the happiness of both society and the individual, as these institutions are central to the formation of our characters. He shows us how both the oppressor and the oppressed are harmed by unjust institutional arrangements, such as gender inequalities in the family. In sum, Mill's The Subjection of Women is perhaps the finest piece of social and political philosophy produced in the modern era, and should be read by all interested in social justice, feminism, or ethics.

Obviously, my problem is not with the text in this particular edition of J.S. Mill's classic. The problem is the edition itself. First, on Amazon "Search Inside" it made it seem like the edition came with commentaries - it does not. This is basically just a photocopy of some earlier edition of the book, put between the cheapest digital photocopies they could find. The only good thing about this edition is the huge margains around the text (for taking good notes), but those are obviously only there because it was easiest to photocopy the book on this paper. Yuck.

I read this book for a graduate Mill seminar in Philosophy. Recommended reading for anyone interested in philosophy, political science, feminism and history.

John Stuart Mill, 1806-73, worked for the East India Co. helped run Colonial India from England. Minister of Parliament 1865-68 he served one term.

In The Subjection of Women Mill first and foremost advocated the need for all humans to improve their characters. He was a firm believer, that all people regardless of their race or sex, had the capacity to learn and improve their characters. In light of this belief, Mill sets the tone for his argument in his opening paragraph of his essay wherein he wrote that the legal means by which the female sex was subordinated to the male sex hindered the character development of all members of society. He was the first male in Britain to champion the cause of women to the extent that he did, and he suffered plenty of criticism and insults for doing so. He was also the first Member of Parliament to introduce a bill in the Commons to enfranchise women. He worked tirelessly throughout his life supporting women's rights with both his pen and his purse.

I find that his essay really turned a spotlight on the many horrors that women endured throughout the history of mankind at the hands of their brutish husbands. No other person's writings illuminated the deprivations that women had endured the way Mill's essay did. No doubt, Victorian sensibilities were shocked when he wrote about the brutality that many women in marriage suffered at the whim of their tyrannical husbands--rape and beatings were at the top of his list.

One of the ideas that Mill gave his fervent support to, and that I greatly admire him for, is the concept that freedom of choice for people is a crucial ingredient in character formation and in improving society and civilization for everyone. This belief led him to argue that marriage as it existed in his time was nothing better than legal and state sponsored slavery. Women had few options in life. If they were married to a tyrant who beat them it was almost impossible to obtain a divorce. Divorce was rare in his day and actually had to be approved by an act of parliament. In addition, if a wife did obtain a divorce, not only would she most likely lose custody of her children, she would also be denied any visitation privileges as well. Mill correctly complained that outside of the home women were left with few options in life. Professional education and career paths were closed to them. Men were fearful of the competition in the workplace women would present if they were allowed employment in professions or trade guilds. Therefore, when it came to workplace opportunities, society left women with few options-- prostitution, or menial domestic work. Thus, Mill saw that the lesser of all evils that women could choose was marriage. Their life in the home was reduced to serving as scullery maids and raising children. Thus, he wrote women treated this way were turned into shrews, which not only made their lives miserable, but also the lives of those around them. For all these reasons Mill believed that the institution of marriage was an impediment; not just to women, but to the progress of civilization as well. Considering that marriage laws had the force of several millennia of religious and societal mores behind it, one can certainly understand why his description of its depravity on humankind won him few friends in "polite" Victorian society.

During his time, a married woman's property automatically devolved to her husband, and Mill correctly saw this as one more inequity against women placed on them by society. Therefore, when he married Harriett Taylor in 1851, a financially secure widow, he remained true to his convictions and wrote a formal renunciation to all of her property in protest against the current law. In addition, while a Member of Parliament he cosponsored the Married Women's Property bill in 1868 to try to change the law. Finally, he sternly rebuked this abomination in his essay by rightly concluding that marriage left the vast majority of women in the unenviable position of "the personal body-servant of a despot" (CW XXI: 285).

I read the subjection of women as a freshman in college. I believe that the subjection of women is one of the best arguments for equality of genders that has ever been written. beyond the usual cited feminist arguments that pervade pop culture, this book using reason argues that not only are women disadvantage by society unequal treatment, but MEN are too. Society is deprived of what they might have achieved, and we are all the lesser for it. Although written a hundred years ago, the ideas still have not been taken to heart by society. If more people read this book, the culture would be better off.

A founding document of modern feminism by the granddaddy of libertarian thought. If you have any interest in feminism and/or classical liberalism (a.k.a. libertarianism), you must read this short, brilliant book.

I actually preferred this over Frances Sherwood's novel about Mary Wollstonecraft. Whether you believe that Wollstonecraft had an affair with the painter Fuseli makes a big difference in how you perceive her. It makes her seem like a perpetual victim who was always making mistakes about men. This discredits Wollstonecraft as a pioneer of feminism. Lyndall Gordon rightly points out that there is no evidence that Wollstonecraft was involved with the married Fuseli and calls it "the Fuseli slander".

On the other hand, Gordon does engage in speculation herself. They are mostly educated speculations and there is a good chance of them being true. I thought that the speculation that Wollstonecraft's lover Imlay was a spy had the least credibility because there are other explanations for his behavior that seem more likely to me.

I was glad that Lyndall Gordon included such tantalizing bits about Shelley's first wife, Harriet Westbrook and Clare Claremont, the daughter of William Godwin's second wife. The little she has to say about them makes me think that they were extraordinary women and I'd love to know more.

In my opinion a better conceptualization Of Mary Wollstonecraft's
Life, Ideas, and Experinences is author: Frances Sherwood
Tile: Vindication.

However the Gordon book is an adequate read

This is a beautifully written biography about a fascinating woman. While she was a serious thinker in advance of her times, her life was of the stuff that would make a good romantic novel. The backdrop is not only England and Ireland, but the French Revolution and includes the machinations of various representatives of the fledgling United States stationed in Europe. No less interesting are the chapters on the women who were her biologic and ideological heirs including her second daughter who married Shelley and wrote Frankenstein.

While I respect Gordon's decision to stick closely to journals and letters in writing her biography of Mary Wollstonecraft, I wondered why she offered so little in the way of the broader political world Mary was a part of it in the late 18th century, especial since she responded to it in her writings. The author offers little in regard to the meetings that were most intriguing, like the dinner parties hosted by her publisher, Joseph Johnson, that included leading revolutionary figures like Thomas Paine and her eventual husband, William Godwin. Gordon does talk about the revolutionary ferment in Britain at the time, but doesn't expand it into a broader discussion on how Mary's writings reflected these concerns, and how she managed to effectively escape censure, unlike Thomas Paine, who found himself being tried for sedition in absentia. What we get is a set of very intriguing stories, such as her long affair with Gilbert Imlay that took her to France and Scandinavia, that wet one's appetite but fails to satisfies one interest in her as a revolutionary figure.

Mary Wollstonecraft reached a broad audience with her writings, in particular A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, which was in response to the new French government's Rights of Man. She, like other women who were part of the revolution, felt left out when the new government essentially turned its back on the rights of women. Mary avoided house arrest by secretly marrying Gilbert Imlay, an American in Paris. Gordon sets up many of the situations that befell Mary in Paris and her frustrating relationship with Imlay that came for nought after a long voyage to Scandinavia trying to recover his losses in regard to an ill-fated shipping venture. As with her brothers and sisters, Mary felt a strong responsibility to the man she loved, but this feeling was never fully reciprocated.

Gordon shows in detail how Mary had to deal with the paternalistic world of the late 18th century, from her good-for-nothing father, to her miserly elder brother, and the varoious relationships of her friends and family. All this is well and good, but Mary was a political writer, and we get so little of her actual thoughts on government, which were the focus of her many writings.

After all, Mary was one of the early suffragettes, and her writings form the cornerstone of feminist writings in the 19th century. Gordon alludes to Jane Austin and Virginia Woolf and other writers she felt were influenced by Mary in one way or another. Gordon had a pension for comparing Mary's real life to the fictional lives Austin had created in her novels. Time and time again, we read about what Mary suffered through, lending emotional weight to her writings, but there wasn't any real attempt to probe the intellectual origins of these writings. Mary may have saw herself as a new genus of woman, but her writings didn't come out of an intellectual void, and that is what is missing in this biography.

This book is not the place to begin if you are not already convinced of Mary Wollstonecraft's genius. I began reading to find the author referring to Wollstonecraft as a genius without any preface for this claim. I was immediately thrown out of the narrative by this assumption. The author describes each of the books that Wollstonecraft wrote without bothering to asses their merit for the reader, are we to take for granted that they were great literary works? I found this lack of any sort of judgment of the subject strange. The book similarly failed to engage me in the narrative. The author leaves her subject for long discussions of the history of the family that she was a governess for. This subject did not have enough baring on Wollstonecraft's life to make it worth including. That such a unique and groundbreaking woman should have her life reduced to so dull a narrative, with so many assumption about her life disappointed me. The book itself failed to hold my interest.

My English class read Frankenstein last year, so I was interested in learning more about the author. This book certainly did not disappoint. I thought it was well-written and fascinating. It was also fast-paced. While the characters would occassionally be a bit over-dramatic, I figured most of this was due to their "romantic" natures. The author did a good job of making the characters, especially Mary, seem like people. It was easy to see Mary as a young girl falling "in love" with the poet Shelley.

All in all, this was a good read. I'd recommend it to anyone interested in history and literature or who simply wants to read a good young adult novel.

which captures our attention & imagination right from the start! I couldn't put this book down and read it in 2 days. I truly enjoyed this work work of fiction... It is more of a historical romance using historical figures from the past (mainly Mary & Percy Shelley) and interweaving fictionalized events/interactions between them.

I was amazed at how much of the novel paralleled Mary & Percy Shelly's real life events..... This book is written from Mary Shelley's perspective and one truly feels as if one were reading Mary Shelly's personal memoirs, diaries, or letters on the events going in her life and how she may have felt about all that was going on in her life. Definitely an interesting read for sure & highly recommend.

In 1814 poet Percy Shelley seduces young Mary, who flees with him to Europe against her family's wishes. With family and society against her actions, Mary becomes haunted by visions - and finds them evolving into her all-too-real world in ANGELMONSTER, a complex and original story recommended for advanced teen readers.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

This is a well done historical novel for young adults which focuses on the passionate but troubled real life of Mary Shelley. Bennett does not sugarcoat the suffering and social exile that resulted from Mary's love affair (and later, marriage) to Percy Shelley, the scandalous atheist, radical, and poet. We see, however, how Mary harnessed the many demons of her life to create a timeless masterpiece, the novel Frankenstein. Funny that in her lifetime she would be thought of as the wife of that scandalous poet, and now he is discussed as the husband of the brilliant author.
This novel is perhaps best for middle to upper teens, as the subject matter is a bit mature and hard to understand for younger readers. At points, the writing is memorable in re-creating the wild passions and obsessions of Shelleys. portraying them as rebelling against the traditions and dogmas of their time but never quite managing to forge a workable moral code of their own. It is essentially about a beautiful but imperfect love affair, but is also a fascinating portrait of perhaps the first truly modern woman.

I'm a grad student in literature, and I've studied Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's Frankenstein many times. I looked forward to reading this book because I liked the idea of a fictionalized history of Mary and Percy's "courtship" and marriage.

*Some degree of spoilers ahead*

I was greatly disappointed. Without spoiling the book too much, I felt that it cheated Mary Shelley. Veronica Bennett drastically changes the timeline of Shelley's life in order to use Frankenstein as an allegory of the Shelley marriage. Their marriage was sensational enough--there was no need to make the drastic changes Bennett makes in this novel. All in all, I felt these changes diminished Mary Shelley as artist and intellectual. According to the introduction to one of my copies of Frankenstein (the Norton Critical Edition, 2nd edition), in the years that she took to write the novel, she read nearly 100 books a year--in many different languages. Bennett makes only passing mention of Mary Shelley reading--and then it's just "horrid" novels like Gothics. (Which she may have actually read. That's not what bothers me. Bennett thoroughly ignores the fact that Mary Shelley also read philosophical texts and was well versed in all of the major thinkers of her time.) In this novel, her stepsister reads Jane Austen, but she does not.

Bennett completely cuts out all evidence of Mary Shelley's intellect and diminishes her accomplishments as a writer.

I don't mind the idea of fictionalizing the life of a famous person, but in this book, Veronica Bennett has reduced Mary Shelley and made her a far less interesting person.

This edition reprints the Shelley portion of the old Modern Library Giants volume, The Complete Poems of Keats and Shelley (who made a rather odd couple, but were nowhere near as mismatched as William Blake and John Donne, stars of a companion Giants volume).
Because Keats wrote about 450 (standard print) pages of poetry in his short life, and Shelley in his slightly longer time wrote close to a thousand - not counting his various prefaces and lengthy notes, as well as the interesting commentary of his first editor, and widow, Mary Shelley, which all previous editions had retained - it should come as no surprise that the capacity of even a Giants volume was strained, and compromises had to be made.
The compromises all hit Shelley, as the more prolific and perennially less popular of the two poets: many early poems, and some of the more fragmentary lyrics and translations were simply left out; the remaining juvenilia, including the long poem Queen Mab, were printed in double column format (with so many carry-over lines that you wonder why), as was a mid-length poem of his maturity, Rosalind and Helen. Shelley's notes to Queen Mab and some other prose, mostly connected with the early poems, were also omitted.
The Giant edition, even with these sacrifices made, was still longer than War and Peace. If one accepts that putting almost all the works of Shelley and Keats together in one volume is a desirable thing, then it has to be admitted this was a pretty decent way to do it. As it was an inexpensive commercial edition, it didn't go out of its way to better the established texts of rival editions (dating back to around 1900).
Modern Library later re-released the contents in separate Shelley and Keats volumes that have remained in print to this day; the ML Shelley was the only (fairly) modern, (mostly) complete, (generally) readable - all rival editions were double-column - edition available during the 70s, 80s, 90s; with the single exception of the Oxford University Press edition that was aborted after two volumes (covering the poems up to about 1816), and cost about a zillion dollars per book.
Today there are two expertly-edited, impressively over-annotated complete versions in the works: one American, one British. The American edition has only one volume out (as of mid-2002), containing just the first 150 pages of his poetry, and for about eighty American dollars. Shelley's greatness bloomed a bit late: the consistently readable poetry will only appear from volume 2 on; the great works will start around volume 4, at this rate. The British edition, by Longmans, costs well over a hundred dollars a volume, is not available..., and seems to only consist of a second volume at this time, representing Laon & Cythna through the Cenci (c.1817-1818). Both these volumes were published years ago; at this rate we should have rival perfectly-edited, entirely unaffordable complete editions of Shelley's entire poetical works by about 2015.
I give all this information to demonstrate that the Modern Library edition, -despite- reprinting inadequate texts of The Triumph of Life and Laon & Cythna / The Revolt of Islam, -despite- omitting the famous notes to Queen Mab (so much better than the poem), -despite- printing some material in hideous double columns...
...is the best volume of this great author's works available.

This edition reprints the Shelley portion of the old Modern Library Giants volume, The Complete Poems of Keats and Shelley (who made a rather odd couple, but were nowhere near as mismatched as William Blake and John Donne, stars of a companion Giants volume).
Because Keats wrote about 450 (standard print) pages of poetry in his short life, and Shelley in his slightly longer time wrote close to a thousand - not counting his various prefaces and lengthy notes, as well as the interesting commentary of his first editor, and widow, Mary Shelley, which all previous editions had retained - it should come as no surprise that the capacity of even a Giants volume was strained, and compromises had to be made.
The compromises all hit Shelley, as the more prolific and perennially less popular of the two poets: many early poems, and some of the more fragmentary lyrics and translations were simply left out; the remaining juvenilia, including the long poem Queen Mab, were printed in double column format (with so many carry-over lines that you wonder why), as was a mid-length poem of his maturity, Rosalind and Helen. Shelley's notes to Queen Mab and some other prose, mostly connected with the early poems, were also omitted.
The Giant edition, even with these sacrifices made, was still longer than War and Peace. If one accepts that putting almost all the works of Shelley and Keats together in one volume is a desirable thing, then it has to be admitted this was a pretty decent way to do it. As it was an inexpensive commercial edition, it didn't go out of its way to better the established texts of rival editions (dating back to around 1900).
Modern Library later re-released the contents in separate Shelley and Keats volumes that have remained in print to this day; the ML Shelley was the only (fairly) modern, (mostly) complete, (generally) readable - all rival editions were double-column - edition available during the 70s, 80s, 90s; with the single exception of the Oxford University Press edition that was aborted after two volumes (covering the poems up to about 1816), and cost about a zillion dollars per book.
Today there are two expertly-edited, impressively over-annotated complete versions in the works: one American, one British. The American edition has only one volume out (as of mid-2002), containing just the first 150 pages of his poetry, and for about eighty American dollars. Shelley's greatness bloomed a bit late: the consistently readable poetry will only appear from volume 2 on; the great works will start around volume 4, at this rate. The British edition, by Longmans, costs well over a hundred dollars a volume, is not available on Amazon, and seems to only consist of a second volume at this time, representing Laon & Cythna through the Cenci (c.1817-1818). Both these volumes were published years ago; at this rate we should have rival perfectly-edited, entirely unaffordable complete editions of Shelley's entire poetical works by about 2015.
I give all this information to demonstrate that the Modern Library edition, -despite- reprinting inadequate texts of The Triumph of Life and Laon & Cythna / The Revolt of Islam, -despite- omitting the famous notes to Queen Mab (so much better than the poem), -despite- printing some material in hideous double columns...
...is the best volume of this great author's works available.

This is a fantastic collection of Shelley's work. The breadth, depth, and soul of the man is astounding; his love and invention endless. What truly defines this collection over others is Mary Shelley's presence running through it, providing vivid, incredibly poignant and grounded counterpoint to Shelley's flights of fancy.

To get a true sense of his gifts as a poet, you have to dig into the longer work - none of which you're going to find in the Norton Anthology of Poetry. Just another reason this book rocks.

Shelley was a revolutionary, both in form and content. His finer efforts stands alongside the best the English language has produced. Dig it in the way it was written; heart to hand, pen to paper, and unexcerpted.

This disgraceful edition calls itself the "Complete Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley". It is nothing of the kind.

Much of Shelley's work was suppressed by 19th century editors, poems such as "A Ballad" for example. The poem, beginning "Young Parson Richards stood at his gate", was one of the poems Shelley intended for his projected "Popular Songs" volume, political poems in simple language to be sold amongst workers and their families in England. "A ballad" concerns religious hypocrisy, prostitution and starvation.

Standard editions of Shelley still suppress this poem, 218 years after it was written.

Shelley's first editor, Mary Shelley had no choice about censoring Shelley's more radical poems: she was dependent on Shelley's father Sir Timothy Shelley, for 150 pounds a year that was the different between survival and starvation for herself and her son. And Sir Timothy wanted his dead son, that shameful atheist, democrat and philanthropist, forgotten. Mary Shelley was under financial threat if she preserved her late husband's memory, and in that context her work as editor was brave and loyal.

Let's not forget that people went to jail, during the early and mid-19th century, for publishing Shelley's works: Chartist and other working class and radical publishers.

But by the cusp of the 20th century, Shelley's Victorian editors had no such excuses: and they were neither brave nor loyal. They _could_ have produced a genuinely complete works, but they chose not to. They wanted to give the world a harmless Shelley, a "beautiful and ineffectual angel", as Matthew Arnold called him, and they were prepared to suppress and distort Shelley's works to help preserve that image.

But - amazingly - here we are in the 21st century, and this edition appears. And not only does it perpetuate the various omissions of Shelley's 19th century editors/suppressors (why is _Laon and Cythna_ still appearing in its bowdlerised form as _The Revolt of Islam_?), but THIS EDITION ACTUALLY DELETES CONTROVERSIAL SHELLEY MATERIAL THAT EVEN THE VICTORIANS HAD THE COURAGE TO PRINT.

So if you buy this edition, you'll find many Shelley poems missing, as you will if you buy the Oxford edition of Shelley's Poetical Works. But in this edition you will also find that the notes to _Queen Mab_ have disappeared. Why? The notes to _Queen Mab_ are as integral a part of the poem as Elliot's Notes to _The Wasteland_. The reason is not space, or that the notes are prose. If prose was the problem, why not remove the long prefaces to several of the longer works, or the notes to _Hellas_, or Mrs Shelley's notes?

The reason, clearly, is that Shelley's opinions, as expressed in the notes ot _Queen Mab_ are still controversial. The atheism and the defence of religious freedom including freedom from religion, his hatred of his government's military adventures, his views on marriage, on prostitution, his proto-socialism, are still capable of offending the sort of committee that gets books pulled from libraries, especially school libraries.

And sadly, it seems that there are still publishers who believe that people should be protected from the knowledge that Shelley was a radical, a controversialist on the side of the weak, the poor and powerless, an activist some of whose messages would see him in trouble, still, with those in power today.

Not everyone who buys Shelley _wants_ Shelley the controversialist, of course. He is perhaps the supreme English lyric poet, a poet of nature and of light, idealism and love. But even if you don't particularly want to read the notes to _Queen Mab_, and the other material missing from this volume, you may feel that censorship of a major English poet, whose work and thought should be part of all of our heritage, should not be rewarded or encouraged. Don't buy this edition. There is a complete edition coming, in four volumes, edited by Neil Fraistat. Unfortunately, at US$57 a volume, that will be out of many people's price ranges. However it can be hoped that Fraistat's edition will shame the several publishers of one-volume "Complete Poems" into ending the current censorship and suppression.

But this edition is a huge and disgraceful step _backwards_ in Shelley publishing: actually containing less than the already-inadequate Oxford Complete Poetry. In the meantime, I can only recommend that Shelley lovers buy the Oxford edition, if they can't afford the Fraistat.

No cheers on this one,

Laon (no relation)

I thought the book really kept me on my toes. Mary Shelley had a great insight into what can happen to a person when their knowledge starts to control them. The book was a good read.

I can't speak highly enough of Bloom's notes in general. They are distinctly different from other summary-type works in that much of the book is critical reviews, while the rest is a structural and thematic analysis. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone enrolled in high level literature classes (such as myself) or anyone who wishes to gain a deeper understanding of the novel, not just a cursory plot summary.

The story was great but she needed to go more in depth about the monster because their is too much mystery about him. Like how he was created, where his body parts came from stuff like that.

Because 2/3 of this book is just articles on the work, I would not suggest the book if you are just trying to use it to help you remember details of the book. Still, it does have a pretty good summary and fair character analysi

Mary Shelley was such an interesting person, as indeed many around her were. And yet, for all that, she has been totally dwarfed by her one famous novel - 'Frankenstein' - but even here it is not really Mary Shelley. The novel firstly became famous - not as Mary Shelley's story but as a theatrical adaptation. And since then films have built on and obscured the original genius of 'Frankenstein'.

Surprise, surprise - Mary was a lot better than that. She was a very talented and perceptive writer. There are some recommendations below. 'Maurice' is a beautiful story full of pathos and the regrets of life where it seems impossible to award benefit where it is due without splashing it to where it doesn't belong, or to deliver punishment where it's due without - in the same way - delivering negatives to others who do not deserve it.

The biographical information about Mary Shelley and about 'Maurice' itself is a fascinating story and certainly adds to what is really a very short story - justifying publishing it in a single volume.

Other recommendations:
Mary Shelley - Transformation
Mary Shelley - Matilda
Mary Shelley - Frankenstein (if you haven't read it you may be surprised)
William Godwin - Caleb Williams (Godwin was Mary's father)

My friend offered me this book to read. It's an amazing work. I read the acutal story and then went back and read the introduction and all the accompanying material. The story itself is cute and definately for children. Then you read the intro and all of a sudden you realize that there was so much more that went into the story than you imagined. I highly reccommend it!

This tale is a far cry from Mary's most acclaimed work, Frankenstein. And why not? It was, after all, written for a little girl, and therefore not intended to house any complexities. It is a simple story, broken into three small parts in the fashion of popular adult stories of Shelley's time, and is a tad on the predictable side. It reads almost like a fairytale, with the stolen child reunited with his parents (who happen to be well-off) by pure chance. Despite the story's lack of surprises, I still found it wonderful to settle back into the familiarity of Shelley's writing style with a new text (as will most who have researched her). "The Fisher's Cot" will also appeal to Mary Shelley fans because of the introduction by Claire Tomalin at the very beginning. Tomalin does a good job of setting the scene that the story was written in so that the casual reader will be able to enjoy not only the actual story, but the story behind it as well. Overall, if you're a Shelley fan you definitely should get this book. If you're not, I politely suggest that you review all your options first.

I was disappointed with the beginning of the book. It made me think that the whole story would revolve around the struggles of an exiled prince that sought to reclaim his "rightful" seat of power in his native town. Pretty worn out material.

The book got more interesting as Euthanasia and Beatrice were added to the plot. It seemed though that the women of the story were too much influenced by Castruccio throughout their lives. He lied to and scorned both of them, and seemed to never put them ahead of his addiction to power, yet they were enthusiastically driven mad by the memory of him.

Being that the book was written by a revolutionary female English author who grew up in the early and mid 19th century, I thought the women characters in the novel would reflect a sense of triumphant independence. Maybe back then her characters were exceedingly strong, but not very by today's standards.

I can say that Shelley's writing was enjoyable, and her descriptions were wonderful. I also like the references throughout to Dante and various other historical personalities.

Valperga is Shelley's 1823 historical and fictional account of the life of Castruccio Castracani who lived in the 14th century. You don't need to know anything about Italian history to become immersed and interested in this political novel. Shelley's story is exciting, and the Oxford edition provides numerous notes to clarify the historical figures and situations that are a part of the story. The novel follows the life of Castruccio, from his birth and the exiling of his Ghibelline family by the Guelphs to his rise as a commanding, powerful and tyrannical prince. Shelley writes about Castruccio's political and social endeavors which intertwine with the prince's relationships with two women, the devout, loyal, and powerful Guelph, Euthanasia, and the eccentric and heretical Beatrice. This novel of loyalty, love, war, religion, politics, and the desire for power is a novel that anyone seeking out more work by Mary Shelley should read.

I thought this novel was very interesting. It was an Italian tale written by an English authoress, who did a very fine job of it. Unfortunately, this book is not as recognized as some of Mary Shelley's other work, but hopefully it will be soon.