Mary Shelley, Life of William Godwin

Abstract

Mary Shelley's Life of William Godwin is an incomplete biography of a major author of the Enlightenment by his daughter, a major Romantic author. The working title 'Life of William Godwin' was affixed some time ago by the Bodleian to a sheaf of papers dated 1835 to 1839, the majority in the handwriting of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, forming an 'unfinished' and 'abortive' biographical memoir of her late father. In July 1836, Godwin's widow Mary Jane signed a contract with publisher Henry Colburn [Bodleian, MS. Eng. lett. c. 461, fol. 153] for a two-volume 'Memoirs and Correspondence of the late William Godwin', to be written by Mary Shelley, who referred to it while it was in preparation as 'my Father's Life'. At this period, she was 'Mrs Shelley', widow of the poet Shelley, mother of the heir to a baronetcy and daughter of a famous but questionable marriage - that of Mary Wollstonecraft, author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, to William Godwin, author of An Enquiry concerning Political Justice. "Mary Shelley, Life of William Godwin" was originally published as a part of Sydney Electronic Text and Image Service (SETIS), Faculty Projects collection (https://digital.library.sydney.edu.au/pages/setis)