When Mary finished her novel in May 1817, Percy Shelley sent her manuscript, under an anonymous name, to two different publishers, both of whom rejected it. LakingtOn, Allen, and Co. finally accepted it. Early reviews of the work were generally mixed. As quoted in Diane Johnson's introduction to the novel, a critic for The Edinburgh Review found that "taste and judgement [sic] alike revolted at this kind of writing,"_ and "it inculcates no lesson of conduct, manner of morality; it cannot mend, and will not even amuse its readers unless their tastes have been deplorably vitiated." A writer from the Monthly Review, as quoted by Montague Summers in The Gothic Quest, claimed that the setting was so improbable—the story so unbelievable—that it was "an uncouth story... leading to no conclusion either moral or philosophical." Even though.....
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