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Chargement... Mary Shelley (2000)par Miranda Seymour
Chargement...
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"Mary Shelley is the definitive account of the gifted and tragic author whose escape to France at seventeen with the married poet Percy Bysshe Shelley caused great scandal in London and permanently scarred her reputation. The couple traveled, with Mary's stepsister Claire Clairmont in tow, from France to Italy and Switzerland. In the summer of 1816 they rented a villa near Lord Byron's on Lake Geneva where, on a famous night of eerie thunderstorms, they told ghost stories and tales of horror. From that night emerged the idea of Frankenstein, a monster who has become an archetype of societal rejection and has haunted imaginations for nearly two hundred years. His creator was an eighteen-year-old girl." "Tragedy shadowed Mary; she came to lose three of her four children in infancy, and when she was twenty-four, Shelley drowned off the coast of Italy. After his death she moved back to a bleak and impoverished England with her only remaining child and was reduced to hack writing to make ends meet."--Jacket. Aucune description trouvée dans une bibliothèque |
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Google Books — Chargement... GenresClassification décimale de Melvil (CDD)823.7Literature English & Old English literatures English fiction Early 19th century 1800-37Classification de la Bibliothèque du CongrèsÉvaluationMoyenne:
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Four years later, Godwin married Mary Jane Devereux/Vial/Clairmont (she went by a number of different names; she was actually an unwed mother masquerading as a widow), who had children of her own. And thus does Jane Clairmont, later called Claire Clairmont, enter the story. All the little girls and boys grew up in a household full of books and very short on money.
One day, the handsome Percy Shelley entered their lives. 20, a poet, given to extravagant exaggerations about his own actions and the persecution he suffered, Shelley seemed like a savior to Godwin (who expected to get a great deal of money from his aristocratic patron) and Godwin's daughters (who viewed their new friend rather more romantically). Shortly thereafter, Shelley fell in love with 16 year old Mary Godwin (many say for her parentage as well as for her beauty and wit) and, with Jane/Claire Clairmont's help, the girls ran off with him. Of course, Shelley was married at the time, to another teenage girl, and she was pregnant with his second child. But no matter!
Shelley, Mary and Jane/Claire swept across Europe, constantly impoverished but flush with excitement and the romance of it all. A tense triangle sprang up amongst them--Mary and Shelley were in love, but Jane/Claire felt left out, and Shelley liked that she was so sensitive and easily persuaded. Eventually, they ran out of money and returned to England, where they found themselves utterly ostracized. Not even Mary's family would see her, despite their own pasts. Mary's first child was born and died, shortly followed by the birth of another child. She, Shelley and Claire retreated from London for their health, and fell in for a short time with the notorious Lord Byron. Claire had a brief, lopsided affair with him that left her pregnant and Byron annoyed. Meanwhile, Mary had begun to write her greatest work, [b:Frankenstein|18490|Frankenstein|Mary Shelley|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1255576965s/18490.jpg|4836639]. This was also a period of tragedy: no sooner had they returned to England than Mary's half-sister Fanny committed suicide in a little anonymous room, and shortly thereafter Shelley's wife Harriet drowned herself. Less than two weeks later, Mary and Shelley were married.
They continued to live much as they had, although Mary's social ostracization was somewhat lessened. Mary bore two more children in short succession, and then lost her son William and daughter Clara while in Italy. She continued writing, studying, translating while simultaneously leading a vivacious social life and producing good copies of her friends' writing. Shelley became distracted by another woman (the duplicitous Jane Williams, oh how I hate her)
And then tragedy struck. Shelley and his friend were drowned at sea, leaving Mary a widow with an infant son and no money, in a foreign land. She returned to England, fought to get a small allowance from her father-in-law, and spent the rest of her life writing articles and books to supplement her income. Her remaining son, Percy, grew up to be a good-natured man with no poetry and little intellect. Mary died of a brain tumor at 53, having spent her life devoted to Shelley and then, to Shelley's legacy.
All of these tempestuous romances, tragic deaths, domestic quarrelings, petty gossiping, and timeless literature went on in a period of incredible tension and upheaval. Revolution after revolution swept Europe. England was a land of strict censorship laws, incredible disparities between rich and poor, strict codes of conduct--and amidst all this, Mary Shelley is just a smart, depressed woman with few allies, trying to live her life. She was intimidatingly well-read, and set herself to a rigorous education of languages and history. Like her mother, she suffered from bouts of depression; and like her mother, she devoted a great deal of time to uplifting women (but in specific cases, not as a general group). She spent her last days campaigning to get a widowed friend of hers a small allowance to live on.
Seymour does an incredible job of creating a seamless biography out of the countless letters, diaries, articles, and books written by and about her subjects. I never felt overwhelmed, although this book is stuffed full of names, quotes, historical contexts, literary criticism...For anyone interested in the Romantics, the history of early nineteenth century, the evolution of political thought, or Mary Shelley herself, I highly recommend this book. ( )