Mathilda

A new edition of Mary Shelley's second novel Mathilda, which remained unpublished until 1959 due to its themes of suicide and incest. The introduction examines the novel as both a complex exploration of taboo desires and an intergenerational story of reckoning with the horrors of racism and patriarchy.

List of contents

• Introduction


• Note on the Text


• Select Bibliography


• A Chronology of Mary Shelley


• MATHILDA


• Appendix A. 'The Mourner,' by Mary Shelley (1829)


• Appendix B. 'The Fields of Fancy,' by Mary Shelley (1819)


• Appendix C. 'The Cave of Fancy,' by Mary Wollstonecraft (ca. 1788)


• Appendix D. Letter to Lafayette, 11 November 1830


• Appendix E. from Lodore, by Mary Shelley (1835)


• Explanatory Notes

About the author

Deanna P. Koretsky is Associate Professor of English at Spelman College, where she teaches and writes on critical race and gender studies, literatures in English of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and popular culture. Her first book, Death Rights: Romantic Suicide, Race, and the Bounds of Liberalism (2021), shows how cultural representations of suicide inherited from the nineteenth century continue to reinforce anti-Blackness in the modern world. Her work has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, UNCF/Mellon, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Rockefeller Foundation, and other prestigious grants and fellowships. In addition to her solo work as a scholar, Koretsky is a founding member of the Bigger 6 Collective.

Summary

A new edition of Mary Shelley's second novel Mathilda, which remained unpublished until 1959 due to its themes of suicide and incest. The introduction examines the novel as both a complex exploration of taboo desires and an intergenerational story of reckoning with the horrors of racism and patriarchy.

Product details

• Authors: Mary Shelley, Shelley Mary
• Assisted by: Deanna P. Koretsky (Editor)
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 10.04.2025
• EAN: 9780192883049
• ISBN: 978-0-19-288304-9
• No. of pages: 208
• Series: Oxford World's Classics
• Subjects: Fiction > Narrative literature; Fiction > Narrative literature > Main work before 1945; Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative literary studies; FICTION / Literary, FICTION / Classics, Classic fiction (pre c 1945), Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900, Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers, Literary studies: fiction, novelists and prose writers, FICTION / Feminist, Classic fiction: general and literary