The Textual Presence of Mary Shelley’s The Last Man in the Juvenila of the Brontë Siblings

Abstract

This article proposes that Charlotte (1816–1855), Branwell (1817–1848), Emily (1818–1848), and Anne Brontë (1820–1849) were more strongly engaged with the textual Mary Shelley (1797–1851) than has hitherto been critically recognized. The young Brontës, I suggest, reveal in their juvenilia an appropriation of Mary Shelley’s published writings, specifically her apocalyptic novel The Last Man (1826), which was available to the Brontë family through a variety of publications. That this early engagement with Shelley has been entirely underappreciated by critics is one reason why there has been a lack of scholarly attention for the importance of Shelley for the Brontës’ work more generally. Recognition of this Shelleyan familiarity and indebtedness is important for Brontë scholarship because Mary Shelley marks an early model for what the sisters would become: female novelists. The article identifies specific textual parallels, themes, styles, or structures from Shelley’s work within the language, themes, and characters in the Brontës’ juvenilia, showing that the siblings actively engaged with, responded to, and appropriated Shelley’s writing within their fictional Kingdoms of Gondal and Angria.