Screen LibraryMatilda /
But my father, my beloved and most wretched father ... would he never overcome the fierce passion that now held pitiless dominion over him? With its shocking themes of father-daughter incest, Mary Shelley's publisher--her father, known for his own subversive books--not only refused to publish M...
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| Main Authors: | |
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| Published: |
Melville House Pub.,
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| Publisher Address: | Brooklyn, N.Y. : |
| Publication Dates: | [2008] |
| Literature type: | Book |
| Language: | English |
| Series: |
The art of the novella
Melville House classics |
| Subjects: | |
| Summary: |
But my father, my beloved and most wretched father ... would he never overcome the fierce passion that now held pitiless dominion over him? With its shocking themes of father-daughter incest, Mary Shelley's publisher--her father, known for his own subversive books--not only refused to publish Mathilda, he refused to return her only copy of the manuscript, and the work was never published in her lifetime. His suppression of this passionate novella is perhaps understandable--unlike her first book, Frankenstein, written a year earlier, Mathilda uses fantasy to study a far more personal reality. It tells the story of a young woman whose mother died in her childbirth--just as Shelly's own mother died after hers--and whose relationship with her bereaved father becomes sexually charged as he conflates her with his lost wife, while she becomes involved with a handsome poet. Yet despite characters clearly based on herself, her father, and her husband, the narrator's emotional and relentlessly self-examining voice lifts the story beyond autobiographical resonance into something more transcendent: a driven tale of a brave woman's search for love, atonement, and redemption. |
| Item Description: | First Melville house printing: May 2008. |
| Carrier Form: | 134 pages ; 18 cm. |
| ISBN: |
9780976658375 0976658372 |
| Index Number: | PR5397 |
| CLC: | I561.44. |
| Call Number: | I561.44/S545-10 |