Synopses & Reviews
General Series Editors: Gay Wilson Allen and Sculley Bradley
Originally published between 1961 and 1984, and now available in paperback for the first time, the critically acclaimed Collected Writings of Walt Whitman captures every facet of one of Americas most important poets.
Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts gathers Whitmans autobiographical notes, his views on contemporary politics, and the writings he made as he educated himself in ancient history, religion and mythology, health (including phrenology), and word-study. Included is material on his Civil War experiences, his love of Abraham Lincoln, his descriptions of various trips to the West and South and of the cities in which he resided, his generally pessimistic view of Americas prospects in the Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, and his reminiscences during his final years and his preoccupation with the increasing ailments that came with old age. Many of these notes served as sources for his poetry—first drafts of some of the poems are included as they appear in the notes—and as the basis for his lectures.
Review
Praise for the original edition:
“Every teacher of graduate students in Whitman and American literature in general will wish to have this edition in his university and perhaps home library.”
-American Literature,
Synopsis
"Brings together the pwerful works of a mother/daughter combination... These novels will prove a foundation for any college-level course on literature and feminism."
The Bookwatch
"A gripping tale of incestuous desire... vitalized by the powerful evocation of nature and the bolder passions of full-blown Romanticism."
Belles Lettres
This volume for the first time brings together three extraordinary works of fiction by Mary Wollstonecraft, generally recognized as the mother of the feminist movement, and Mary Shelley.
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. [xxix]) and index.
About the Author
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was born in England on August 30, 1797. Her parents were two celebrated liberal thinkers, William Godwin, a social philosopher, and Mary Wollstonecraft, a women's rights advocate. Eleven days after Mary's birth, her mother died of puerperal fever. Four motherless years later, Godwin married Mary Jane Clairmont, bringing her and her two children into the same household with Mary and her half-sister, Fanny. Mary's idolization of her father, his detached and rational treatment of their bond, and her step-mother's preference for her own children created a tense and awkward home. Mary's education and free-thinking were encouraged, so it should not surprise us today that at the age of sixteen she ran off with the brilliant, nineteen-year old and unhappily married Percy Bysshe Shelley. Shelley became her ideal, but their life together was a difficult one. Traumas plagued them: Shelley's wife and Mary's half-sister both committed suicide; Mary and Shelley wed shortly after he was widowed but social disapproval forced them from England; three of their children died in infancy or childhood; and while Shelley was an aristocrat and a genius, he was also moody and had little money. Mary conceived of her magnum opus, Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus, when she was only nineteen when Lord Byron suggested they tell ghost stories at a house party. The resulting book took over two years to write and can be seen as the brilliant creation of a powerful but tormented mind. The story of Frankenstein has endured nearly two centuries and countless variations because of its timeless exploration of the tension between our quest for knowledge and our thirst for good. Shelley drowned when Mary was only 24, leaving her with an infant and debts. Mary died in 1851 at the age of 54 from a brain tumor.