Proserpine and Midas by Mary Shelley
Mary Shelley, n e Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, was born on the 30th August 1797 in Somers Town, London, to Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin. This rich heritage from which she was born was immediately disturbed by her mothers' death when she was only 10 days old. Her father remarried four years later and despite the family's' impoverished circumstances, which led to home schooling by her father, who was in constant debt and with it the attendant financial worries, her education was rich with breath of subject and visits by poets and politicians including Coleridge and Aaron Burr. As a writer Mary is forever remembered with the birth of the modern horror novel with her classic work; Frankenstein. Mary was indeed a great talent and many of her other short stories, poems and plays are not recognised for their worth as they should be. However, her editorship of Shelley's legacy is held in high esteem. Her relationship with Percy Bysshe Shelley, and the many complications it caused, is certainly one of the short but great arcs of her life. She met him at 17 and lost him in 1822 when she was 25. Mary Shelley died on 1st February, 1851. She was fifty-three. The attending physician believed her death to be the result of a brain tumour. She leaves behind a legacy of works that are the equal of many. At the time society did not, in the main, approve of women writers despite the undoubted quality of their work. It was a different time. Today we are able to enjoy her works unhindered by the prejudice and moral codes of the times.Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) was an English Romantic poet. Born into a prominent political family, Shelley enjoyed a quiet and happy childhood in West Sussex, developing a passion for nature and literature at a young age. He struggled in school, however, and was known by his colleagues at Eton College and University College, Oxford as an outsider and eccentric who spent more time acquainting himself with radical politics and the occult than with the requirements of academia. During his time at Oxford, he began his literary career in earnest, publishing Original Poetry by Victor and Cazire (1810) and St. Irvine; or, The Rosicrucian: A Romance (1811) In 1811, he married Harriet Westbrook, with whom he lived an itinerant lifestyle while pursuing affairs with other women. Through the poet Robert Southey, he fell under the influence of political philosopher William Godwin, whose daughter Mary soon fell in love with the precocious young poet. In the summer of 1814, Shelley eloped to France with Mary and her stepsister Claire Claremont, travelling to Holland, Germany, and Switzerland before returning to England in the fall. Desperately broke, Shelley struggled to provide for Mary through several pregnancies while balancing his financial obligations to Godwin, Harriet, and his own father. In 1816, Percy and Mary accepted an invitation to join Claremont and Lord Byron in Europe, spending a summer in Switzerland at a house on Lake Geneva. In 1818, following several years of unhappy life in England, the Shelleys--now married--moved to Italy, where Percy worked on The Masque of Anarchy (1819), Prometheus Unbound (1820), and Adonais (1821), now considered some of his most important works. In July of 1822, Shelley set sail on the Don Juan and was lost in a storm only hours later. His death at the age of 29 was met with despair and contempt throughout England and Europe, and he is now considered a leading poet and radical thinker of the Romantic era.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781513282701 |
| ISBN 10 | 1513282700 |
| Title | Proserpine and Midas |
| Author | Mary Shelley |
| Series | Mint Editions |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Graphic Arts Books |
| Year published | 2021-07-08 |
| Number of pages | 74 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |