556 Reviews England's First Family ofWriters:Mary Wollstonecraft, William Godwin, Mary Shel ley. By Julie A. Carlson. Baltimore and London: JohnsHopkins University Press. 2007. ix+328pp. ?35.50. ISBN 978-0-8018-8618-8. The worst thing about JulieA. Carlson's subtly argued and scholarly book is the title. 'Firstfamily seems ameaningless bit ofmediaspeak, ironic since theGodwin Shelley group is characterized by their ideological opposition to the family as an institution (forGodwin because individual affection sabotages the universal bene volence on which political justice depends; for Wollstonecraft because the family, despite itsattractions, oppresses women and limits their contribution to public life; and forShelley, lifelongmotherless child, almost lifelongwidow, because familywas so fragile). Carlson builds on thework of critics such asWilliam St Clair to give a sense of themassive shared literaryprogramme of the group, backed up by detailed close readings from a broad range of texts.As inher previous book, on Coleridge and Ro mantic theatricality (In theTheatre ofRomanticism: Coleridge, Nationalism, Women (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994)), she gives fresh new perspectives on neglected texts?Godwin's Essay on Sepulchres and the Life of Chaucer, Mary Shelley's 'Fields of Fancy'?and on 'minor*genres; an especially illuminating chapter focuses on theirwriting for children. The group can hardly, indeed, be considered apart from each other, since each both facilitates and undermines the others. Reversing traditional literaryhistories, Carlson locates Percy Bysshe Shelley on themargins: literally so, since he emerges fullyonly in the last chapter. The earliest accounts of P.B.S. represented him as a Romantic colossus 'by extracting him from his texts on family or his context in the family* (p. 239), and Carlson returns him to that context, showing him profoundly influenced byWollstonecraft and Godwin, and 'derivative' (p. 3) of theirwork even inwhat seem hismost individualistic claims. The book has twomain sections, 'Revising Family' and 'Life Works'. Rather than a single trajectory,Carlson offers variations on key themes: reading and writing, central in the lifeand work of the group, all ofwhom, in self-analysis and fiction, 'ascribe life-changing moments to books* (p. 2); thewriting of lives; the struggle to define the role of, and construct oneself as, a public intellectual (in the case of twomembers, in defiance of conventional ideologies of gender); the complicated opposition of private and public spheres; trauma, memory, and commemoration. The family itself is also a recurrent theme,with family reform central to the political theory of at least Godwin and Wollstonecraft. Even Mary Shelley, generally seen as themost domestic of the three, is engaged in reconfiguring public and private spheres,most famously in the ability of the Frankenstein family to absorb outsiders (with the catastrophic resultswhich are figuredby themonster). The book's main achievements include a clear and sympathetic view ofGodwin, warts and all; his lack of emotional intelligence, but also his willingness to learn and take risks, and his real originality as a writer. Carlson also presents a revisionary picture ofMary Shelley, no longer the conservative 'perpetualmourner* (p. 162) who turned self-pity into a fineart,but a public intellectual indialogue with her father's MLR, 104.2, 2009 557 work, especially his Essay on Sepulchres, and taking literallyhis idea of cherishing the illustrious dead as a public, political duty asmuch as private therapy. This is not an easy book to read. It isdensely written and sometimes abstract, so that some sentences require repeated reading, and may not give up all their secrets even then.Carlson also has an irritating liking for slashes?con/fusion, life/writing, im/personal, auto/biographical?whose full significance sometimes eludes me. But the book is full of acute and lucid observations, generous in its resurrection of little-known texts, and I have noted a number of issues and sentences that Iwant to continue to think about as I return to the primary texts. University of Manchester Jacqueline Pearson The Publishing History ofVncle Tom's Cabin, 1852-2002. By Claire Parfait. Aldershot: Ashgate. 2007. x+269 pp. ?55. ISBN 978-0-7546-5514-5. This book is much more interesting than itsdry and slightly inaccurate title suggests. Claire Parfait has compared themany different editions ofHarriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, from the appearance of the firstinstalment...