The Biographical Element in the Novels of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Abstract

Readers of Shelley's poetry must regret the lack of a biography of the poet by his gifted second wife, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. More keenly than any other of those among whom his life was lived, she apprehended the presence of the “divine fire” in his work. For it she endured public ignominy, poverty, exile, and more—the occasional wavering of his affections toward her—with unexampled patience. For it she set aside her own literary aspirations, themselves neither slight nor groundless, until that blow which stilled forever the voice of her beloved numbed also her genius and left her desolate. Afterwards, when that which the sea gave up had vanished in mist or been resolved to dust on the sands of Spezzia, and when that dust had been laid away near the pyramid of Caius Cestius at Rome, there remained the memory of him to be cherished, and his fame to be kept pure to succeeding ages.