Lodore

Also published as The Beautiful Widow Mary Shelley’s penultimate novel explores the web of relationships between three women bound together by the exacting Lord Lodore: Cornelia Lodore’s estranged wife ruled by her mother and the norms of aristocratic society; Ethel his daughter raised in the wilderness of Illinois and utterly reliant on her father; and finally the independent and highly educated Fanny Derham the daughter of Lodore’s childhood friend. Long considered the most Austen-like and socially oriented of Mary Shelley’s novels Lodore is an essential read for anyone seeking to understand this brilliant feminist writer.