ROMANTIC OUTLAWS
by
Charlotte Gordon
the extraordinary lives of
Mary Wollstonecraft
and her daughter
Mary Shelley
OVERVIEW
(FROM NIGHTOWL REVIEWS)
Hardback
This groundbreaking dual biography brings to life a
pioneering English feminist and the daughter she never knew. Mary
Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley have each been the subject of numerous
biographies, yet no one has ever examined their lives in one book—until
now. In Romantic Outlaws, Charlotte Gordon reunites the trailblazing
author who wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Woman and the Romantic
visionary who gave the world Frankenstein—two courageous women who
should have shared their lives, but instead shared a powerful literary
and feminist legacy.
In 1797, less than two weeks after giving birth to her second daughter,
Mary Wollstonecraft died, and a remarkable life spent pushing against
the boundaries of society’s expectations for women came to an end. But
another was just beginning. Wollstonecraft’s daughter Mary was to follow
a similarly audacious path. Both women had passionate relationships
with several men, bore children out of wedlock, and chose to live in
exile outside their native country. Each in her own time fought against
the injustices women faced and wrote books that changed literary
history.
The private lives of both Marys were nothing less than the stuff of
great Romantic drama, providing fabulous material for Charlotte Gordon,
an accomplished historian and a gifted storyteller. Taking readers on a
vivid journey across revolutionary France and Victorian England, she
seamlessly interweaves the lives of her two protagonists in alternating
chapters, creating a book that reads like a richly textured historical
novel. Gordon also paints unforgettable portraits of the men in their
lives, including the mercurial genius Percy Shelley, the unbridled
libertine Lord Byron, and the brilliant radical William Godwin.
“Brave, passionate, and visionary, they broke almost every rule there
was to break,” Charlotte Gordon writes of Wollstonecraft and Shelley. A
truly revelatory biography, Romantic Outlaws reveals the defiant,
creative lives of this daring mother-daughter pair who refused to be
confined by the rigid conventions of their era.
Advance praise for Romantic Outlaws
“A fascinating, thoughtful and continuously absorbing book, one to which
I know I shall return on many future occasions.”—Miranda Seymour,
author of Mary Shelley
“Charlotte Gordon reunites a mother and daughter tragically separated at
birth in this rousing and surpassingly readable epic spanning the
Romantic era. Wordsworth and Byron must step aside to make room for two
brilliant women, Mary Wollstonecraft and her daughter Mary Shelley,
early and late Romantics whose remarkable contributions to their time
and ours lend Gordon’s artfully twined tale special significance.”—Megan
Marshall, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Margaret Fuller: A New
American Life
“Romantic Outlaws is a gripping account of the heartbreaks and triumphs
of two of history’s most formidable female intellectuals, Mary
Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley. Gordon has reunited mother and daughter
through biography, beautifully weaving their narratives for the first
time.”—Amanda Foreman, author of A World on Fire
“Mary Wollstonecraft and her daughter Mary Shelley stand out as daring,
unconventional, and courageous women—in their times and ours.
Appreciate the ‘heroic exertions’ of their lives and savor the skill
with which Charlotte Gordon tells their intersecting stories.”—Susan
Ware, general editor, American National Biography (copyright NightOwl Reviews)
AUTHOR
Charlotte Gordon is a prize-winning poet and biographer. She received
her undergraduate degree in English and American Literature from Harvard
University and a Ph.D. from Boston University. Since 1986, she has
taught creative writing, history, literature, religion, and theatre. Her
poetry has won many prizes, including a Robert Penn Warren Award. Her
biography of the seventeenth-century poet, Anne Bradstreet, Mistress
Bradstreet: The Untold Life of America's First Poet won a Massachusetts
Book Award for non-fiction.
REVIEW
The author, Charlotte Gordon has written an exciting double biography of two very strong, stand on their own women, mother Mary Wollstonecraft and her daughter Mary Shelley. Ms. Gordon's writing is amazing. She writes alternating chapters of the two women's lives without being confusing to the reader. Some books you have to go back and re-read. This one you don't.
Both women were real rebels. Their families came from out of society's mainstream.. Both gave birth to out of wedlock children. They weren't condemned for it. They were on the very edge of society, financially and socially. They both wroth fiction and non fiction.Ms. Wollstonecraft, was raised by a violent father and a sickly mother. She left home early to get away and make her own life. Mary Wollstonecraft wrote in 1792 her famous work, "A Vindication of the Rights of Women". This gave her beliefs a literary credibility. She published other free thinking works but her life was cut short by her death after thee birth of her second child, Mary Goodman.Mary Wollstonecraft's husband and Mary Godwin who was another social critic and political philosopher. The second Mary gained notice through her writing and her relationship with the poet, Percy Shelley. The author of "Frankenstein" and other works, Mary Shelley lived a longer life than her mother. Both Mary's were brought to life in Ms. Gordon's biography. But Ms. Gordon writes of two women that she fully integrates the society of times as well and figures in the women's lives. This book is well written and quite long.
I was given a complimentary copy of ROMANTIC OUTLAWS from the author, Charlotte Gordon and Night Owl Reviews for my view of the book. (copyright NightOwl Reviews)
I would give this book 5 STARS.
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