Romantic Outlaws
The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Her Daughter Mary Shelley
About the book
The lives of Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein, and her mother Mary Wollstonecraft, the feminist behind A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, run side by side in alternating chapters of Charlotte Gordon's dual biography. The two never knew each other: Wollstonecraft died in 1797, under two weeks after her second daughter was born. Yet their paths ran in parallel. Each loved several men passionately, had children outside marriage, chose to live in exile outside her native country and fought the injustices women faced. Moving between revolutionary France and Victorian England, Gordon also portrays the men around them, including Percy Shelley, Lord Byron and the radical William Godwin.
Margaret Heffernan called the two Marys among the most important women that most people seldom consider, and praised Gordon's decision to interweave their biographies to show the bond between mother and daughter.
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Margaret Heffernan (Author & Entrepreneur)
Wollstonecraft and Shelley are two of the most important women most people have rarely thought about. They believed passionately (and at great cost) in the equality of women and the vital, distinctive contribution women should be able to make to human history. Their stories alone are remarkable, but Charlotte Gordon’s idea to interweave the two biographies brilliantly explores the deep relationship between the mother and the daughter who never knew each other. In their search for a richer and more liberated way of life, the Romantics cherished Wollstonecraft’s writing and the daughter they hoped would embody the life of imaginative emancipation. What a legacy — but what an inspiration.
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