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Overview
Mathilda, named after its narrator, traces a young woman’s troubled life from birth to her premature deathbed. Following her mother’s death during childbirth and her father’s subsequent abandonment, Mathilda is raised by her aunt in rural Loch Lomond, Scotland. A gifted reader and promising intellectual, she rises from her difficult circumstances to lead a relatively happy childhood. When, at the age of 16, her father reenters her life, the two reconnect and eventually move together to London. As she begins to receive suitors however, her father’s strange jealousy and irrational behavior conceal a terrible secret. When he reveals his incestuous desires to Mathilda, she rejects him, resulting in his suicide and leaving her unmarried, orphaned, and financially unstable. Living in self-imposed exile, she befriends the similarly melancholy Woodville, a young widower and poet who does his best to care for her despite her crushing bouts of depression and frequent suicidal thoughts. Mathilda is an emotionally complex and ultimately difficult novella recognized for its controversial themes and for its parallels to Shelley’s own tragic life.
With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Mary Shelley’s Mathilda is a classic of English literature reimagined for modern readers.
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9781513271446 |
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Publisher: | Mint Editions |
Publication date: | 02/09/2021 |
Series: | Mint Editions (Women Writers) |
Pages: | 106 |
Product dimensions: | 5.00(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.26(d) |
About the Author
Table of Contents
Awknowledgements Introduction Mary Shelley: A Brief Chronology A Note on the TextMathilda
Appendix A: The Romantic-Era Suicide Debate- From William Godwin, An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, and Its Influence on General Virtue and Happiness (1793)
- From David Hume, Essays on Suicide and the Immortality of the Soul (1783)
- From William Rowley, A Treatise on Female, Nervous, Hysterical, Hypochondriacal, Bilious, Convulsive Diseases. Apoplexy and Palsy; with thoughts on Madness, Suicide, &c. (1788)
- From John Francis, “Sermon III. On Self-Murder” (1749)
- From Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sorrows of Werter: A German Story (1774)
- From Lord Byron, Manfred, A Dramatic Poem (1817?)
- William Wordsworth, “The Complaint of a Forsaken Indian Woman” (1798)
- Full-Detail Transcription from Mary Shelley’s Manuscript of “Mathilda”
- From Mary Shelley, “The Fields of Fancy” (1819)
- From Mary Shelley, “The Mourner” (1830)
- From Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus (1818)
- From Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary, A Fiction (1788)
- From Mary Wollstonecraft, The Wrongs of Woman, or Maria (1798)
- From Mary Wollstonecraft, “Cave of Fancy” (1787)
- From Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Cenci (1819)
- From Percy Bysshe Shelley, Laon and Cythna, or, The Revolution of the Golden City (1818)
- From Vittorio Alfieri, Myrrha: A Tragedy. The Tragedies of Vittorio Alfieri (1815)
- From Matthew Lewis, The Monk (1796)
- From Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto: A Gothic Story (1764)
- From John Polidori, Ernestus Berchtold; or,The Modern Oedipus: A Tale (1819)
- William Godwin, “Letter from Godwin to Shelley Following Fanny Imlay’s Suicide” (13 October 1816)
- From Harriet Shelley, “Harriet Shelley’s Suicide Letter” (7[?] December 1816)
- Mary Shelley and Claire Clairmont, “Mary’s Letter to Friends on Her Son’s Final Illness” (3 and 5 June 1819)
- William Godwin, Manuscript Letter to Mary Shelley (9 September 1819)