Summary
Mary Shelley is best known for her classic novel Frankenstein, a literary masterpiece that remains one of the most frequently taught books in high school and college classrooms, but her other works of fiction are also important and increasingly popular. In addition, her personal life continues to fascinate. She was the wife of the great Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and the daughter of the feminist activist Mary Wollstonecraft. The new Critical Companion to Mary Shelley is the definitive one-stop resource for anyone interested in this influential author.
Coverage includes:
- A concise but thorough biography of Shelley
- Entries on Shelley's major works—including extensive coverage of Frankenstein, as well as all her other novels and important short stories—with subentries on each work's main characters
- Entries on related people, publications, and topics, such as Byronic hero, Paradise Lost, romanticism, science fiction, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Mary Wollstonecraft
- Appendixes, including a chronology, a bibliography of Shelley's works, and a secondary source bibliography.
About the Author(s)
Harold Bloom is Sterling Professor of the Humanities at Yale University. Educated at Cornell and Yale universities, he is the author of 30 books, including Shelley's Mythmaking (1959), The Visionary Company (1961), Blake's Apocalypse (1963), Yeats (1970), A Map of Misreading (1975), Kabbalah and Criticism (1975), Agon: Toward a Theory of Revisionism (1982), The American Religion (1992), The Western Canon (1994), Omens of Millennium: The Gnosis of Angels, Dreams, and Resurrection (1996), and Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human (1998), a 1998 National Book Award finalist. The Anxiety of Influence (1973) sets forth Professor Bloom's provocative theory of the literary relationships between the great writers and their predecessors. His most recent books include How to Read and Why (2000), Genius: A Mosaic of One Hundred Exemplary Creative Minds (2002), Hamlet: Poem Unlimited (2003), Where Shall Wisdom Be Found? (2004), and Jesus and Yahweh: The Names Divine (2005). In addition, he is the author of hundreds of articles, reviews, and editorial introductions. In 1999, Professor Bloom received the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal for Criticism. He has also received the International Prize of Catalonia, the Alfonso Reyes Prize of Mexico, and the Hans Christian Andersen Bicentennial Prize of Denmark.