The Cambridge Companion to Mary Shelley

Known from her day to ours as ''the Author of Frankenstein'' Mary Shelley indeed created one of the central myths of modernity. But she went on to survive all manner of upheaval - personal political and professional - and to produce an oeuvre of bracing intelligence and wide cultural sweep. The Cambridge Companion to Mary Shelley helps readers to assess for themselves her remarkable body of work. In clear accessible essays a distinguished group of scholars place Shelley''s works in several historical and aesthetic contexts: literary history the legacies of her parents William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft and of course the life and afterlife in cinema robotics and hypertext of Frankenstein. Other topics covered include Mary Shelley as a biographer and cultural critic as the first editor of Percy Shelley''s works and as travel writer. This invaluable volume is complemented by a chronology a guide to further reading and a select filmography.