Tag Archives: Publishing

Is this a “lost” portrait of Mary Jane Clairmont Godwin?

Mrs Godwin (?) Portrait at Chawton House

On a recent visit to Chawton House in Hampshire England, most familiarly known for its connection to Jane Austen, I came across this portrait. The Chawton House library has obtained a collection of the writings of early woman travel writers, referred to as The Centre for the Study of Early Women’s Writing, 1600–1830, including Mary Shelley and her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft.

This oil on canvas original painting hangs in an upper hallway. One might expect it to be in the National Portrait Gallery or some other vaunted institution of collection, but you have to go to Hampshire to see it. A card below the painting asks, “Could this be Mary Wollstonecraft?” Two cards provide its uncertain provenance and clues.

“Portrait of a lady said to be Mrs. Godwin, née Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) Attributed to George Beare (1725-1749)  Oil on Canvas 1792 (?)”

“Is this Mary Wollstonecraft, famous women’s rights writer. The answer remains a mystery. At auction, it was attributed to George Beare and said to be ‘Mrs Godwin, authoress, 1792’ (as per a faint inscription on the front). She does not closely resemble the known portrait by John Opie and George Beare died 10 years before Wollstonecraft was born.”

“Her ‘mob cap’ is characteristic of the late 1780s, so it is unlikely that George Beare painted it. Another label on the back attributes it to John Downman RA, a plausible possibility as he was working in London at this time.”

I agree that the subject of the portrait bears little resemblance to any known likenesses of Mary Shelley’s mother, Mary Wollstonecraft. But it does seem to bear a resemblance to someone else in the Godwin household. I’ll let you be the judge.

The attribution to George Beare I think can easily be dismissed, while John Downman, who was a prolific painter of portraits, in admittedly different styles, could be accurate. But what of the reference “said to be Mrs Godwin, authoress, 1792 (?).” What if it is indeed Mrs Godwin, however not the first, but the second, Mary Jane Clairmont Godwin, Mary Shelley’s stepmother?

If the date of 1792 is correct, this is negative evidence, as Mary Jane Clairmont was of no notoriety at that time. But if the other characteristics are considered, perhaps the date (?) is off.

In the portrait, she is holding a book in her hands, clearly suggesting her connection to writing, or publishing. Of the precious little we know of Mary Jane Clairmont’s physical look, is that her daughter had brown hair, and a brief comment in Mary Shelley’s History of a Six Weeks Tour, a French hotel page referred to her as “a fat lady’. How he may have meant that is open to interpretation, but the woman in the portrait is not slight or thin.

After her marriage to William Godwin in 1801, four years after the death of Wollstonecraft, the Godwins opened their publishing business, The M.J. Godwin Juvenile Library. The business first opened in 1805 off Oxford Street and relocated to 41 Skinner Street in 1807, registered in her name. William Godwin was well known in the literati circle, for his writing and his philosophical bent, but his wife was now a London publisher. They published the Swiss Family Robinson (1816) and other works that came to some prominence, including the Charles and Mary Lamb’s volumes of Shakespear. Though the business struggled later, in the years of its beginning must have been of some notoriety. Mary Jane Godwin was an editor and nominal writer on her own, so a reference to “authoress” is not out of line, or connected to a mistaken identification as Wollstonecraft.

It would seem quite natural that an artist like Downman might be persuaded to paint the wife of a prominent London literary figure like Godwin and a formidable person on her own. And in the first decade of the Juvenile Library, the money for a portrait paid by the business earnings seems reasonable.

If this were indeed M. J. Godwin and not Mary Wollstonecraft the date would likely be around 1806 to 1812. This could easily be within the timeframe John Downman was in London, presenting his works in exhibits. The “mob cap” for older women was still in style into the 1820s with added lace popular beginning around 1800. The cap in this portrait appears to have lace as a prominent feature of its fashionable design and the proud dress of the middle-class is unlike the more egalitarian simple style of Wollstonecraft.

Mrs Godwin ? Mystery Portrait Comparison

Comparison of “Mrs Godwin” at Chawton House and two known portraits of Mary Wollstonecraft by John Opie

For the other “evidence” we would have to rely on the visual. If we look at the portrait in question in comparison to the known portraits of Wollstonecraft, painted by John Opie, one painted within a year of Wollstonecraft’s death in childbirth, said by Mary to be painted while she was pregnant with her, they look wholly different. If we then compare the painting of “Mrs Godwin” with the known portrait of Claire Clairmont, the resemblance is striking, while the quality of the Clairmont portrait is somewhat less.

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is mrs_godwin_and_claire_frd.jpg
Comparison of “Mrs Godwin” at Chawton House to Claire Clairmont

Is this comparison conclusive? Clearly not, and as mysterious as the question of its being Wollstonecraft, it seems to me well within the realm of possibility that a “lost” portrait of Mary Jane Vail Godwin née Clairmont, London publisher, editor and step-mother of Mary Shelley, authoress of Frankenstein, has lain misidentified for two centuries. You be the judge.

Secret Memoirs of Mary Shelley  – E-Book

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Mary Shelley’s Invisible Girl meets the Invisible Man

Engraving of Rosina by Boxall of Mary Shelley's Invisible GirlA recent auction notice appeared for a sale at Bonham’s auction house in London. One of the items was listed fairly simply as “The newly discovered handwritten manuscript of part of The Invisible Girl, a semi-autobiographical short story by Mary Shelley (1797-1851)” with an auction sale price estimate between 2,000-4,000 pounds. It was being offered with items of other female authors, including a first edition of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone that had been in the possession of Rowling’s literary agent, estimated at 40-60,000 pounds at auction and letters from Margaret Mitchell, author of Gone With the Wind, a collection of what could be argued as the three most commercially successful women writers, or writers of any gender if you count movie box office.

The Mary Shelley manuscript offered consisted of a few pages of writing, densely packed on letter paper. There was no date of the writing on the documents but the appearance of the story in Keepsake was 1833 and said to be written in 1832. And even though Shelley’s Frankenstein shares shelf space and movie marquee history from Universal Pictures with H.G. Wells’ The Invisible Man, first serialized in Pearson’s Weekly in 1897, they had little in common, but would be make for perhaps an intriguing pairing.

The Invisible Girl is one of a hand full of Gothic tales that Mary Shelley published in The Keepsake. Magazine in from 1829 to 1834, capitalizing on her notoriety following the re-publishing of Frankenstein under her name. Her writing credit for the story in the Keepsake was not her name, but “By the Author of Frankenstein”. Others stories she wrote around the same period include “Ferdinando Eboli” (1829), “The Evil Eye” (1830), “Transformation” (1831), “The Dream” (1833), and “The Mortal Immortal” (1834).

The story includes several common motifs of the Gothic Terror Tale like those read during that summer by Lake Geneva, featuring an unhappy heroine, overbearing tyrant guardian, and a ghost figure wandering the landscape, like the story originally thought of by John Polidori. And like several other works by Shelley, “The Invisible Girl” employs a framed narrative often referred to in Gothic literature as a “Fragment”, like the Walton letters of Frankenstein, a device rather akin to the “found footage” horror film style of today. It wouldn’t be referred to as a “short story” until sometime later. The frame involved surrounds a portrait of a girl, and the telling of the tale to a visitor.

The Invisible Girl is a pure Gothic Tale that involves a ghost, but is not supernatural, more a mood piece of lost love and longing. It takes place on the coast of Wales, and the title refers to an apparition of a ghost-like figure, than turns out to be a young woman wandering the coast.

It is the story of Rosina, who lives with her guardian, Sir Peter Vernon. She is secretly engaged to his son, Henry. While Henry has traveled away from the estate, Sir Peter discovers the relationship and sends Rosina from the house. He later regrets his harshness and searches for Rosina, but cannot find her. He tells his son that she is dead when he returns home. Henry joins a search to recover her body, but is told by villagers of a ghostly figure of a young woman seen wandering the woods at night, they call the Invisible Girl. Henry ultimate discovers Rosina hiding in the ruin of a castle tower in the woods and realizes she is the roaming apparition. Sir Peter forgives his son for the secret engagement, and the two young lovers are at last married and together.

The story is said to be semi-autobiographical, but perhaps only draws on some of Mary’s life experiences, with rejection by the noble father of a lover, as she had been by Shelley’s father. And the Wales setting may just be a device of a remote romantic setting, or perhaps echo the location of her half-sister’s Fanny’s familiar ground. The ghost of the young woman lost in the landscape may connect to Fanny’s suicide, and Fanny’s confession to Mary that she felt she was the invisible daughter in her family. The story features scenes in a boat tossed on the sea trying to reach shore and nearly lost, which echoes both Shelley’s death in Italy and the near drowning of Mary, Percy and Claire in crossing the channel in 1814 described in the journals and the Secret Memoirs. Unlike the tragedies she might draw on for the story, it ends happily with lovers reunited and reconciled with the father, a happy ending Mary could not quite manage in her own life.

The publishing of the story included a portrait of a girl said to be the subject in the story, Rosina, seen winsomely reading in a parlor with an Italian musical instrument and a parrot. The image was a painting by William Boxall, engraved by J.C. Edwards. Boxhall, who later became director of Britain’s National Galley, early in his career focused on portraiture. He had returned from art study travels in Italy, so the painting may be from that trip and not an original for the story. William Boxall was a friend of William Wordsworth and had painted his portrait in 1831. Wordsworth and Mary Shelley knew one another through her father, so Mary may have called upon Boxall to provide a portrait for her story to be published. Mary may also have a connection to the engraver. J.C. Edwards in the 1820s was noted to be an illustrator of Shakespeare and Mary’s early friends though her father, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Charles Lamb, both made their reputations on the bard’s revival. Who the model in the image of Rosina is, provides some mystery all its own.

Secret Memoirs of Mary Shelley  – E-Book

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Frankfurt Book Fair 2018 – Aces to Show at Combined Book Exhibit

Aces Pilots in WW2 Battle of Britain Book CoverSo I have my first book going to be launched at the Frankfurt Book Fair with a full page ad of reviews in the display catalogue. The Frankfurter Buchmesse is the oldest and largest of book trade fairs in the world. It is so iconic, I included the Frankfurt Book Fair in a screenplay I wrote. It isn’t a movie, yet, but still might be. I had a German countess who moonlighted as a murder mystery novelist writing under a pseudonym, and the story begins with her at a book fair. I thought Frankfurt for the tradition. There is a draft where it’s the London Book Fair for location incentives, but that’s another story.

Now, I’m going to be at the Frankfurt Book Fair, or at least my book, my second novel. an epic story of love and war and American pilots who volunteer for the RAF and fight in the Battle of Britain, Aces. It begins in the pre-war years where two students at Princeton, an America and German who fly as competitive racers in the Thompson Trophy air races of aviation innovation are both vying for the love of the same girl. She marries the German and they end up duking it out in the skies over the English Channel. Aces: Pilots in WWII Battle of Britain, being published by Winged Lion Publications.

I get promotional emails from time to time from the Jenkins Group, a self-publishing service company, offering a variety of services for indie authors. One thing they do, along with other marketers of author services, from Publishers Weekly to Lulu, is offer placement of indie author books at book fairs. They are basically resellers for the Combined Book Exhibit which has been displaying books at markets and trade fairs since 1933. The Combined Book Exhibit can display upwards of 1200 books per show, from a variety of publishers from major imprints like Random House to specialized niche publishers, micro-publishers, down to indie self-published authors.

Aces Pilots Novel Review Quotes Frankfurt Book Fair

Since my second novel was coming out at the time I got the latest “deadline approaching” notice for the Frankfurter Buchmesse, the timing seemed fortuitous. The book has been getting some very positive reviews and quotes, from the Book Life Prize, Kirkus Reviews and Reader’s Favorite. The assorted costs that arise in marketing a new release indie book seem to come like arrows in a Robin Hood archery contest, with book review upgrades, and assorted listings and applications. The idea of spending $200 to send a book to sit on a shelf at a book show with 7,000 exhibiters seemed of uncertain value at best. But with the great review quotes to put into a full page ad, for an extra $150, seemed like a reason to take the chance. The book has German content and seems suited to an international audience, so Frankfurt seemed a natural place to launch it for the world market.

In searching about for advice or blog posts about participating with the Combined book Exhibit, to see whether it was worth the money, a scam to squeeze a few dollars out of unwashed hopefuls, or a fool’s dream, I was surprised to find very precious few authors or indie publishers who had actually tried it and had anything to say about the result, whether it was worth it or not. I found a few posts on Alli and some other independent book author sites cautioning that it was not worth it for an individual book to sit on a shelf among thousands of others, with no one to actually promote it, and that the Combined Book Exhibit booth tenders wouldn’t really know anything about it, or direct visitors to it.

As of this writing (in September) the book fair appearance is yet to come, so the outcome is unknown. A factor in my choosing to go ahead was that I thought my cover might visually stand out on a shelf, and I could direct visitors to it by advertising it in the catalogue. The $150 for the full-page ad for Frankfurt goes in the booth catalogue, and not any show-wide guide, but at least in the booth is a close “captive” targeted audience, presumably with an interest in indie books with the review quotes in the ad the selling point, and more value than the book on the shelf. And visitor can take the catalogue home or back to the office for a lingering presence beyond the show shelf.

My dealings with the Jenkins Group, through Andrew Parvel, and with Combined Book Exhibit, where I called to get some clarification about deadlines and requirements, and where I apparently was directed to the head of the company have been direct and uncomplicated so far. I did get the feeling that dealing with individual authors/micro-publishers is not an everyday focus, as some of the processes and answers to questions seemed a little standardized.

Combined Book Exhibit and Publisher’s Weekly have joined in combined online world rights sales interface service which offers the possibility for listing books for international rights and provides a standard contract, and means of collecting royalty payments, through Global Rights Network on Pubmatch. It was launched about three years ago, but I don’t know how much it is used by rights holders.

I will follow up this post after the show to update on the results, if any. Though, having a book introduced at the Frankfurt Book Fair brings some bragging rights on its own and alone may be worth the price of entry.

Aces: A Novel of Pilots in WWII Battle of Britain Amazon US

Aces: A Novel of Pilots in WWII Battle of Britain Amazon UK

Aces 5 Star Review Readers Favorite

Aces Review Online Book Club

Aces – Rights queries on Pubmatch

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Mary Shelley in Bath – Frankenstein Begins

Tragedy, Turmoil and Creativity for the Shelleys in Bath

5 Abbey Churchyard Bath

Shelley’s 5 Abbey Churchyard

The city of Bath makes a great deal of fuss about its place in the life of Regency author Jane Austen. There’s an Austen Centre, exhibits and annual celebrations, tour marketing and the like. Austen lived in Bath for nine years from 1800 to 1809, but her time in Bath was not especially significant in her own literary history. She wrote the drafts of her completed novels before moving there, and she was not published until after she had left. While for the longest time, the city barely acknowledged its place in the life of Austen’s contemporary author, Mary Shelley, who developed and wrote a significant portion of her greatest work while a resident there. A museum for the author of Frankenstein is now in the planning stage.

Though only a fairly brief five months, the time spent in Bath by Mary Godwin, Percy Shelley and Clare Clairmont in 1816 were some of the most tumultuous and eventful in their story and in the formulation of Mary’s novel of Frankenstein. Within this few months, a birth and two suicides would deeply affect them, and by the time they left, Mary Godwin would be Mrs. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley.

After departing the company of Byron in Geneva, the Shelley party, Shelley, Mary, Clare, the Shelleys’ two-year-old son, William, and a nurse, Elise Duvillard, hired in Switzerland, returned back to England. They travelled through France on a different route than they had taken in 1814, passing through Dijon, Auxerre, and Villeneuve, while stopping for brief tourist visits at the palaces of Fontainebleau and Versailles, and to Rouen for the Cathedral. They sailed from Le Havre to Portsmouth on the 8th of September, 1816.

Bath Then and NowFrom Portsmouth, Shelley separated from the two sisters to see his friend, Thomas Peacock, in Great Marlow, while Mary and Clare went to Bath. Clare’s pregnancy by Byron was beginning to show or make her condition, at least, clear by this time, and the idea was to find a distant lodging from London. Mary was still estranged from her father for her relationship with Shelley and they thought to conceal Clare’s condition. She was still using alternate spellings of her chosen name, Claire or Clare. It was mostly Claire in Switzerland and France using the French spelling, and Clare or Clara in England. Mary was confused enough to use both spellings in the same letter, while others of the family were still calling her by her birth name, Jane (Mary Jane, after her mother).

Mary Godwin wrote two diary entries of their arrival in Bath:

Tuesday, September 10.—Arrive at Bath about 2. Dine, and spend the evening in looking for lodgings. Read Mrs. Robinson’s Valcenga.

Wednesday, September 11.—Look for lodgings; take some, and settle ourselves. Read the first volume of The Antiquary, and work.

Mary had begun a short story version of the “nightmare” vision of that summer while in Switzerland, which Byron had referred to as a “Pygmalion” tale of making a man, but with Shelley’s encouragement, she had decided to write a full novel, which she began in earnest at Bath, writing the first chapters of Frankenstein. She had been writing in a notebook she had purchased in Geneva, but purchased new English paper notebooks in Bath for her longer vision.

The Shelleys had two lodging locations in Bath. The first address was No 5 Abbey Churchyard, on the main square across from the west front of the Bath Abbey. That building, which housed a reading library which may have attracted Mary’s notice, and apartments, was torn down in 1889 to make way for the addition of the Victorian Queen’s Bath expansion of the Bath Pump Room. The other address was two blocks away at No 12 New Bond Street. Shelley was travelling for much of this time, dealing with money issues, negotiations with his father, Sir Timothy Shelley, over his inheritance and the two tragic suicide events, as well as looking for a hoped permanent house to settle in near his friend in Marlow.

In early October, Shelley was corresponding from the 5 Abbey Churchyard address to both Godwin, regarding money he had promised to lend, and to publisher John Murray regarding the eminent publishing of The Third Canto of Byron’s Childe Harold. Shelley was waiting for the publishing proofs to be sent to him at that address where he expected to remain for the winter. For her part, Mary addressed her letters from the 12 New Bond Street address, where Clare was residing. One might conjecture that this was an attempt to show Shelley and Mary, still unwed, to be living separately, or they may have set the nurse and her son in New Bond Street with the pregnant Clare, so that she could be with Shelley when he was in Bath. Mary referred to her step-sister, “looking in on” her, so they were for at least some time apart.

Not long after settling, Mary travelled to Marlow on the 19th of September to meet Shelley and returned on the 25th. They received an alarming letter from Fanny sent from Bristol on the 9th of October and Shelley went to find her, following her to Swansea where she had committed suicide. Mary noted in her diary on 12 October “buy mourning” purchasing mourning clothes for Fanny’s death, although there was no funeral and the body was unclaimed to keep her anonymity and reputation. Mary was writing Frankenstein off and on through this period with a number of references to writing in her diary, making revisions as she went.

She was reading sea voyage literature at this time, suggesting she was writing the Captain Walton beginning of the novel, inspired by her youthful visits to Dundee, Scotland. She was also reading Sir Humphrey Davy’s reference on chemistry, as she was working on Victor Frankenstein’s studies and scientific background. Davey was the originator of ideas of electro-chemistry and voltaic batteries which had so intrigued a young Percy Shelley at Oxford.

Mary wrote a letter on the 5th of December in good spirits to Shelley in Marlow that she had completed “chapter four” (the bringing to life Victor’s creature), but also involving Safie and the creature’s language learning, which she noted she thought was long. She later edited this significantly shorter for the published 1818 version, separating into two chapters. She was also concerned with Shelley’s tendency to latch onto the first house he might find, and seemed to have a wish not to have to live with her sister, which had been nearly constant for two years.

“I was awakened this morning by my pretty babe, and was dressed time enough to take my lesson from Mr. West, and (thank God) finished that tedious ugly picture I have been so long about. I have also finished the fourth chapter of Frankenstein, which is a very long one, and I think you would like it. And where are you? and what are you doing? my blessed love. … in the choice of a residence, dear Shelley, pray be not too quick or attach yourself too much to one spot. … A house with a lawn, a river or lake, noble trees, and divine mountains, that should be our little mouse-hole to retire to. But never mind this; give me a garden, and absentia Claire, and I will thank my love for many favours.”

In November, Shelley was reading Plutarch’s “Lives” and Milton’s “Paradise Lost”, and this seems to have crept into Mary’s writing, as she has the creature reading these while in the De Lacey Cottage in Chamonix.

Shelley returned to Bath from Marlow on the 14th of December, but the next day, the 15th , was informed in a letter from Thomas Hookham that his wife, Harriet Westbrook Shelley, was found drowned in the Serpentine Lake of Hyde Park. She had been missing from her residence for three weeks. She was named only as Harriet Smith at the inquest, a named she had used for a lodging in Queen Street. She had left no note, and little evidence was given, though a rumor suggested she was deserted by a household groom and that she had a proclivity to suicidal thoughts since her youth. The London Times reported only that a respectable lady she was found drowned “advanced in pregnancy”. Mary made no comment on the event of Harriet’s death, but she was enthusiastic to support Shelley’s effort to take custody of the children, Ianthe and Charles, and the Shelleys were now free to marry and hoped for a reconciliation with her father.

“How very happy shall I be to possess those darling treasures that are yours. I do not exactly understand what Chancery has to do in this, and wait with impatience for to-morrow, when I shall hear whether they are with you; and then what will you do with them? My heart says, bring them instantly here; but I submit to your prudence. You do not mention Godwin. When I receive your letter to-morrow I shall write to Mrs. Godwin. I hope, yet I fear, that he will show on this occasion some disinterestedness. Poor, dear Fanny, if she had lived until this moment she would have been saved, for my house would then have been a proper asylum for her.”

Shelley returned to visit Peacock in Marlow to search for a house they might take as a permanent residence and visited Leigh Hunt, the Publisher of the Examiner, beginning a long friendship. Mary Godwin and Percy Bysshe Shelley went to London on December 30, 1816 to be married at St Mildred’s Church, and stayed with the Leigh Hunts. Godwin and Mrs. Godwin also attended the wedding. It was the first time Mary had seen her father since he banned them from Skinner Street after their return from the elopement in 1814. Clare stayed in Bath and Mary promised her a quick return.

Mary stopped writing on her novel during this time. Clare bore her daughter on January 12, 1817. She first named her Alba, in honor of the Shelleys’ nickname for Lord Byron, “Albe” (LB), put prudently changed the name later to Allegra, to avoid the too obvious connection. Mary wrote of “4 days of idleness” in her diary. Her son William’s first birthday was on January 24. Shelley had been in London since the 6th in Chancery Court arguing for custody of his children by Harriet, a suit he lost, despite Mary’s enthusiastic support. The Westbrooks had fought against his taking in the children, using his “atheistic” writings in Queen Mab as evidence of a lack of moral fitness. The children were sent to an unrelated clergyman in Warwick where Harriet had been living. The Shelleys left Bath on February 27, 1816 for Marlow. Mary was pregnant for the third time and beginning on a second notebook volume of her novel.

Take short tour of Bath today.

Secret Memoirs of Mary Shelley  – E-Book

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Did Mary Shelley lie about the origin of Frankenstein?

Mary Shelley's Lost Book HateThe story has been told over and over, repeated by journalists, films and bloggers for almost 200 years. You know the familiar story, Mary Shelley, Lord Byron, Percy Shelley and John Polidori gathered around a fire on a dark and rainy night in the summer of 1816 on the shores of Lake Geneva. They made a bet with each other who could write a scarier ghost story than the “penny dreadful” writers of the day. Mary Shelley went to her room and woke up from a dream, proclaiming she had seen the vision of a student of sciences standing over the horrible creature he created, and the thus began her inspiration to write her famous novel “Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus”.

This telling appeared in the 1831 edition of the book, after the novels first appearance in 1818 without an author’s name and after becoming a scandalous sensation, came out in a new edition in 1822, with an introduction written by Percy Shelley, and then again in 1831 after Shelley’s death in Italy, with the lengthy preface, in which Mary said she included it after constant requests by readers to tell of how she came up with the story, told of how she struggled for several days to think of a worthy ghost story, and then finally one night, as she lay to sleep, “I saw—with shut eyes, but acute mental vision,—I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half vital motion. I opened mine in terror. The idea so possessed my mind, that a thrill of fear ran through me, and I wished to exchange the ghastly image of my fancy for the realities around.”

But is this story the full truth? As Mary said herself, “Everything must have a beginning, and that beginning must be linked to something that went before.” Authors do not wake up one morning and invent a full story. An idea, a concept, a vision, surely, but invariably informed by a personal past, a connection to something deeper in a lived experience. Mary drew for her characters and setting the world of Switzerland around her, the streets of the Plain Palais of Geneva and Mont Blanc outside her window. Yet, from where would the inner life of such a collection of characters of passion and betrayal come from in a young woman of eighteen? The influences of the exciting sciences of the day, electrified vermicelli and the buried, thought dead, ringing the bells from their coffins as they awoke from comas before they might be buried, were all around in the brewing ferment of the enlightening days of the late 18th and early 19th century. The author could infuse and develop these themes as the story took shape over time. But did Mary draw upon an earlier work to shape her first published book?

At the end of her “Six Weeks Tour” elopement with Percy Shelley and her step-sister Claire in 1814, Mary began her first attempt at a novel, which she entitled “Hate”. She never finished it or published it, and this seminal work of a young budding author of remarkable talent has never seen the light of day and Mary Shelley did not reveal its themes or content.

There has been considerable academic discussion over the years about how much her husband, Percy Shelley, may have contributed to the writing of the Frankenstein novel. Certainly, he encouraged her in the writing of it, and he may have offered some editing of it, but how much does he actually appear in the characters of the novel, and who else is represented in the pages? Was Mary’s first attempt at a novel, with the theme of an unexplained hate, also an influence or cannibalized in the writing of the second work? And was Mary Shelley being artfully discreet in her description of the events of that summer in Geneva?

In her public writings, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was very careful in her telling of personal events to leave in the editor’s bin any of the extraordinary personal trauma of her life, mentioning only in the slightest passing of a phrase the deep emotional struggles and passions that must have accompanied the passionate personalities which surrounded her. Deaths of her first born, two suicides, the scorn of society, the longing for a mother and hated step-mother, betrayed by an idolized father and the willful schemes of a step-sister which brought them, with an illegitimate pregnancy, to the doorstep of Lord Byron’s summer rental.

This suggests a thematic origin of something well beyond a ghost story about the hubris of science born in an instant from the image of a waking dream. Did that waking image really come from a past experience and more deeper personal meaning than just a casual story competition. Why did she never reveal from where she derived the unusual title name?

And did Mary Shelley finally reveal the truth behind this waking vision shortly before her death in a discovered confession in the form of a personal memoir of her first journey to Switzerland, in a fuller and more intimate “revised” version of her six weeks tour in the Secret Memoirs of Mary Shelley.

Secret Memoirs of Mary Shelley  – E-Book

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The Missing Novels of Mary Shelley and Claire Clairmont

Hate and The Idiot – Competition of Two Sisters

Book Covers Hate and The Idiot Lost Novels of Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin and Jane Clara ClairmontMary Shelley is certainly famous for her seminal novel of Frankenstein, and she wrote other books to follow, but her first attempt at a novel begun during her teenage elopement and journey across Europe during the summer of 1814 with Percy Shelley and her step-sister Claire née Jane Clairmont is long missing, with only a brief reference to it in letters and her journal. And it was from that journey as well, Claire also attempted a novel, long missing to literature’s judgment.

Mary Shelley, still then Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, began a book while traveling on route back to England after the adventures of France and Switzerland only known by its title “Hate”. Mary herself never publicly elaborated on its theme or content, except that it apparently brought some amusement to Shelley. She abandoned it before completion and one could imagine it might contain themes she would revisit in her later published book, and may have been inspired by the emotional reaction to experiences of her journey of six weeks together with her step-sister and her lover across the devastated lands of France ravaged by the recent Napoleonic War. The title is at the least, tantalizing.

Claire had also begun a novel at the age of 16, with a title no less curious and intriguing for its sharp brevity, “The Idiot”. It is also lost to time and mystery, and its fate may be evidenced in her later expression of some jealousy over her sister’s and her family’s literary success, writing after the death of her brother William in 1832, “In our family, if you cannot write an epic poem or novel that by its originality knocks all other novels on the head, you are a despicable creature, not worth acknowledging.” And wondering, “What would they have done or said had their children been fond of dress, fond of cards, drunken, profligate, as most people’s children are?” – a decided contrast between her Clairmont family character and the more serious Godwins.

In her diary of September of 1814 begun after her travels, Claire would write of wanting to create a character whose independence of mind would cause others to judge them as an “Ideot”. There is evidence that Claire sent this work, perhaps more work-in-progress than completed novel, to Lord George Byron, when she had insinuated an introduction to him in 1816. She noted in letters, using her then preferred name of Clara Clairmont, that it was “half a novel or a tale”, with the pretext of looking for career advice. She was undecided upon either a writing career or an entrance onto the stage through Byron’s connection to the Drury Lane Theater, though she was possibly most interested in a romance with the poet.

Bryon apparently did not respond to it at the time. In a rather desperate sounding and forward letter of a young acolyte who had not received a response, she wrote him, “If you said you were too busy to look at it, I should have understood …it may arise from your affairs and then I am tiresome; or it may be occasioned by negligence, which to me is at least as bad.” Apparently in her eagerness, she made the mistake of submitting a first incomplete draft to someone who didn’t know her. And one may imagine what someone of Byron’s place with many eager fans may have thought of the submission. “Will you make allowance for my years? I do not expect you to approve; all I wish to know is whether I have talents, which, if aided by severe study may render me fit to become an author. I had half resolved to correct and revise it; but afterword, thought if you saw it just as it was, written at intervals, and in scraps, you would be a better judge.”

As for what the story was, she did outline her theme. “My intention was to draw a character committing every violence against received opinion…who knew no other guide on the impulses arising from herself, than herself…whose sweetness and naiveté of character should draw upon her the pity rather than the contempt of her readers.” The story also dealt with themes of Atheism and Christianity and bore some evidence of the journey she had undertaken with her step-sister and Shelley as told in The  Secret Memoirs of Mary Shelley, the Frankenstein Diaries.

“It is at present in a very rude state; perhaps the whole of the first part should be rewritten,” she went on. “The tale is too abruptly begun; I am aware that the first sentence rather tempts one to throw the book down than to continue.” Not the most positive way to present a work for judgment. It is difficult to judge the book with no example remaining, but not hard to suggest that her writing as a teenager may not have been to the standard of her relatives, though her later letters evidenced her skill with words and her intelligence. And where Mary Shelley had resolved not to make herself the protagonist of her stories, Claire’s book seemed as if it was decidedly focused on herself, if in thin disguise. Mary would begin Frankenstein about the same time that Claire was presenting her draft to Byron, and would go though many revisions with the help of Shelley.

While Bryon showed no interest in the book by Miss Clairmont, she pursued him in person, resulting in a daughter between them.  Byron rejected Claire when she came to him pregnant with his child and had apparently  coldly rejected her as he did her writing. She would write to him in 1816 following the summer in Geneva in a letter full desperation at his indifference and longing for his attention, “Now, if I tell you my thoughts, dearest, you mustn’t bring them against me to make me look foolish as you did that hateful novel thing I wrote.”

Percy Shelley may have given Claire some assistance with her story and attempted to help her get it published in 1817, offering it to two publishers, Thomas Hookham, where at the same time he and Mary were publishing their travel journal “History of a Six Weeks Tour”, and to John Murray. Claire’s book was rejected, and never heard from again. She did have the last laugh though on her tragic family circle of romantics, by living to the age of 80.

Secret Memoirs of Mary Shelley  – E-Book

Secret Memoirs of Mary Shelley – Paperback

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Lord Byron in the Hand of Mary Shelley at Keats-Shelley House Rome

Lord Byron and Mary Shelley Exhibiit at Keats-Shelley HouseFrom June 29 until November 6, 2015, the Keats-Shelley House in Rome will be offering a special exhibition “Lord Byron in the Hand of Mary Shelley”. The exhibition presents a sequence of manuscripts on loan from the National Library of Scotland, alongside Byron treasures from the Keats-Shelley House’s own collection – which explores the fascinating relationship between these two important figures of Romantic Literature and the ways in which Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley edited Byron’s work in preparation for its publication.

Mary Shelley met Lord Byron in the fateful summer of 1816 at Lake Geneva, from where the legendary contest of literary lights reading ghost stories launched the 18 year old Mary’s own writing career with imagining of the student of science and his monster. Mary and the “mad, bad, and dangerous to know” Byron, were introduced through Mary’s step-sister’s machinations. Claire Clairmont was pregnant with Byron’s child that summer and Mary had recently given birth to her first son, William, in January of that year. Byron wanted nothing to do with Claire, and would later epically fight over their daughter, Allegra, but the poet and Mary, seemed to develop a friendship. Bryon would never return to England, and his beloved Newstead Abbey, but from these manuscripts it appears Mary acted as a publishing contact following her husband’s tragic death in Italy.

The Keats-Shelley House is the residence in Rome just next to the famous Spanish Steps, where the Romantic poets Keats, Percy Shelley and Lord Gordon Byron lived while Rome, now a museum, library and exhibition center dedicated to the works and lives of the poets. The library houses 8,000 volumes of books, periodicals of these second generation Romantics, with an especially extensive collection of editions of Byron related works, collected by the library’s originator Harry Nelson Gay, as well as many lifetime and nineteenth-century editions of the works of other Romantics and influential writers of the period including William Hazlitt, Leigh Hunt, William Godwin and Thomas Lovell Beddoes, with a small collection of travel and history books celebrating the European ‘Grand Tour’.

Entrance to the exhibition is included in the price of the standard museum entrance ticket. Keats-Shelley House

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Mary Shelley’s Frankensteiniana in 2015-2016

Frankenstein in books, movies and TV for 2015 and 2016 (Reprinted from Travelmode)

It is arguably the most famous single name in literature and in the cultural psyche of fantasy, representing the dark side of humanity, chills and horrors of many a kind. Frankenstein. And it is about get more familiar with a whole rash of new media projects in the works based, whether directly or very loosely on the name, characters and book written by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley emerging in 2015 and 2016, in advance of the 200th Anniversary(s). Upcoming projects encompass the themes and plot of the Frankenstein story as well as the lives of the creator and her relationship circle.

Here are some of the new iterations to come.

Daniael Radcliffe on Set of Victor Frankenstein“Victor Frankenstein” a film in production due in 0ct. of 2015  This is a Hollywood film with Daniel Radcliffe and James McAvoy in a reimagining of the original Mary Shelley novel story, told from the point of view of Dr. Frankenstein’s assistant Igor, played by Radcliffe, who switches from wizard with a scar to sideman to the mad scientist. Except there was no Igor in the book – he came from the movie versions, and with more notoriety from Mel Brook’s comedy spoof of “Young Frankenstein” as a bug-eyed hunchback. Igor wasn’t really in the cannon at all until Universal wanted something for Bela Lugosi to do and put him in “Son of Frankenstein” and needed a creepy character with an accent, spelled with a “Y”. This Igor dresses much better.

“Frankenstein” an independent movie due out in 2015  This is a modern retelling of the story set in Los Angeles by writer/director Bernard Rose, the director of “Candyman” about a present day married couple of scientists who create a monster with dire consequences, told from the point of view of the “monster”.

“Frankenstein Diaries: The Romantics – The Secret Memoirs of Mary Shelley” book due out in summer 2015  A novel of Mary Shelley’s life and love story with Percy Bysshe Shelley and their elopement to Paris in 1814 with Claire Clairmont, with additional secrets revealed in an historically reverent illumination of their intimate motivations and the inspiration for the novel.

“Romantic Outlaws: The Extrordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley” a “dual biography” of the author of Frankenstein and her mother by Charlotte Gordon out on April of 2015.

“Frankenstein Code” TV series from Fox due out in 2015  This is a rip of the name for a modern cop drama series according to Fox “taking inspiration from the basic Mary Shelley mythology of a man brought back to life by scientists playing God” centers on a morally corrupt retired cop who is given a second chance at life when he is brought back from the dead.

“Frankenstein Chronicles” a UK television limited series from ITV  When mutilated stitched bodies float up the Thames River, detectives in Regency period London know that something dark is afoot. The series is shooting in Belfast with Sean Bean, who lost his head in “Game of Thrones”, here playing a detective discovering other severed body parts and tracking down Dr. Frankenstein as a serial killer. “Ripper Street” 60 years sooner.

“A Storm in the Stars” an independent film in development for 2016  Announced with Elle Fanning to play Mary Shelley to be directed by Haifaa Al-Mansour in a period drama telling of the Mary Shelley story according to IMDB, “The love affair between poet Percy Shelley and 18 years old Mary Wollstonecraft, which resulted in Mary Shelley writing Frankenstein”. Recently got a boost at the 2015 Cannes Film Market with Hanway Films signing on for sales, with production hoped for in fall of 2015.

“Mary Shelley’s Monster” a film in pre-production for 2016   This is said by producers to be a modern(ish) telling of the Mary Shelley story, focused on the creation of the book and later, according to IMDB  “Mary Shelley strikes a Faustian bargain with her alter ego as she works on her seminal novel”. Sophie Turner, “Sansa Stark” from “Game of Thrones” has been announced to play Mary.

Already here “Frankenstein M.D.” a web series from PBS  A modern young focused web series which reimagines the title character as Victoria Frankenstein, an obsessive prodigy determined to prove herself in the male-dominated fields of science and medicine.

There are probably a few others out there as well. Universal badly wants to revitalize its library  for a new audience. Maybe they can bring James Whale back from the dead and stitch him together with J.J. Abrams. Or maybe Abraham Lincoln will go monster hunting now, if somebody finds his body and sews him up.

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