This circle also includes Mary’s half-sisters, one of whom was Fanny Imlay. Wollstonecraft’s husband and Mary’s father, William Godwin, and Mary’s husband, Percy Shelley, play significant roles. No account of either Mary’s life would be complete without detailed information of their circle. In this sense, Gordon’s book is a sympathetic take on how the ghost of Wollstonecraft - as well as her words - continued to influence and shape Mary’s life in ways that ran almost parallel to her mother’s. This birth would prove to leave a lasting mark on Mary’s life, as her mother, Wollstonecraft, would die a few days after due to complications. Romantic Outlaws begins with a compelling anecdote of Mary Shelley’s birth. The result is a largely engrossing work by Charlotte Gordon, a writer of various other titles of nonfiction and poetry, and an Associate Professor of English at Endicott College. There are a number of biographies and numerous works of analysis and criticism that focus on both Wollstonecraft and Shelley, but this is the first that attempts to paint a large canvas of the two lives by laying them side by side. Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Her Daughter Mary Shelley is a dual biography of two very well-known names in feminism and literature.
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