Name: Romantic Outlaws
ISBN: 9781400068425

Charlotte Gordon

An analysis of the similar lives of the English feminist writer and her daughter, the author of Frankenstein, reveals the unrealized commonalities in their circumstances, choices and ambitions in spite of never knowing each other. By the award-winning author of Mistress Bradstreet.

The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Her Daughter Mary Shelley

Romantic Outlaws

Summer Joy

***AS READ ON BBC RADIO 4*** NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER 'A gripping account of the heartbreaks and triumphs of two of history's most formidable female intellectuals, Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley. Gordon has reunited mother and daughter through biography, beautifully weaving their narratives for the first time.' Amanda Foreman English feminist Mary Wollstonecraft and author Mary Shelley were mother and daughter, yet these two extraordinary women never knew one another. Nevertheless, their passionate and pioneering lives remained closely intertwined, their choices, dreams and tragedies eerily similar. Both Marys became famous writers, fell in love with brilliant but impossible men, and were single mothers out of wedlock; both lived in exile, fought for their position in society and thought deeply about how we should live. They also broke every rigid convention thrust upon them: Wollstonecraft chased pirates in Scandinavia and sailed to Paris to witness the Revolution. Shelley eloped in a fishing boat with a married man and faced down bandits in Naples. Wollstonecraft proclaimed that women's liberty should matter to everyone. Not only did Wollstonecraft pen the landmark book, The Vindication of the Rights of Woman, her work ignited Romanticism, inspiring a whole new generation of writers, including her daughter. At just nineteen years old, Mary travelled around Italy with Percy Shelley and Lord Byron, and there wrote Frankenstein. Having pushed the boundaries of the literary form, she went on to become the editor of her husband's poetry - a feat of scholarship that established his posthumous reputation. For the first time, Romantic Outlaws brings together a pair of visionary women who should have shared a life, but who instead share a powerful literary and feminist legacy. This is inventive, illuminating, involving biography at its best.

The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft & Mary Shelley

Emily Morgan

My heart aches for Wollstonecraft and Shelley. I will write a better review when I have more coherent thoughts. For now I am just angry at every single 19th Century man.

Kim Tyo-Dickerson

Outstanding. I took my time, savouring each double chapter, never losing interest, enthralled to the end. Masterful biography.

Melody Izard

I just knew Mary Shelley as the author of Frankenstein. Never gave her much thought actually. I had never heard of Mary Wollstonecraft. And it seems I hardly knew anything about that string of Victorian poets. 

Even though there were far too many Marys in this book and they ran together and sometimes I forgot if it was the time of Mary the mother or the time of Mary the daughter, I really liked this book. Long, long, long. And I certainly need to learn more about Lord Byron and his indoor foxes, badgers, geese and more. He was a dilly.

Romantic Outlaws The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Her Daughter Mary Shelley

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