A. A. Markley (Essay Date 1997)

SOURCE: Markley, A. A. "'Laughing That I May Not Weep': Mary Shelley's Short Fiction and Her Novels." Keats-Shelley Journal 66 (1997): 97-124.

In the following excerpt, Markley attempts to reassess Shelley's reputation by examining her stories and novels, arguing that a fresh look at her neglected stories, which explore themes such as the loyalty of women and arranged marriage, shows the breadth of her interests and stylistic abilities.

I

Still fixed in the general cultural memory as a grieving widow who was unable to reproduce the success of her first novel, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley has not been known as a writer skilled in a range of generic conventions. Until very recently her reputation has been based almost solely upon Frankenstein (1818), and occasionally The Last Man (1826), both of which are serious works of science fiction within which Mary Shelley also refashioned the genre of...