Mary Shelley

The Last Man (1826) is a dystopian novel by Mary Shelley. Dedicated to the recently deceased Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron, The Last Man was controversial upon publication and was immediately suppressed by British authorities. Resurrected by dedicated critics and readers, the novel is now recognized as a pioneering work of science fiction and as the first work of dystopian literature to be published in English. The ambitious and semi-autobiographical...

Mathilda (1959) is a posthumous novella by English writer and Romantic Mary Shelley. Written as a means of self-distraction following the deaths of her young children in Italy, Mathilda is a work haunted by tragic loss. Unpublished for over a century, its posthumous appearance helped cement Shelley's reputation as a leading Romantic, an artist unafraid of confronting such themes and taboos as incest and suicide in her work. Mathilda, named after...

The Mortal Immortal - Mary Shelley - "The Mortal Immortal" is a short story from 1833 written by Mary Shelley. It tells the story of a man named Winzy, who drinks an elixir which makes him immortal. At first, immortality appears to promise him eternal tranquility. However, it soon becomes apparent that he is cursed to endure eternal psychological torture, as everything he loves dies around him.

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: his estranged wife Cornelia, a woman ruled by her mother and the norms of aristocratic society; his daughter Ethel, raised in the wilderness of Illinois and utterly dependent on her father; and finally, the independent and highly educated Fanny Derham, the daughter of Lodore's childhood...

Frankenstein de Mary Shelley. Mary Shelley, recién salida de la adolescencia fue la compañera del célebre poeta inglés Percy Shelley, con quien se fugó a Suiza, a pesar de él estar casado. Cuando su esposa se suicidó, los dos amantes contrajeron matrimonio. En una reunión en la que asistió Byron, este último propuso que cada uno escribiera una historia de horror y la joven sorprendió a todos cuando llego con la historia de "Frankenstein,...

The tales and stories in this collection were casually written at different periods and under different influences. As a rule, it may be said that Mary Shelley is best when most ideal, and excels in proportion to the exaltation of the sentiment embodied in her tale. Virtue, patriotism, disinterested affection, are very real things to her; and her heroes and heroines, if generally above the ordinary plane of humanity, never transgress the limits of...

"The Mortal Immortal" (1833) is an example of Shelley's short fiction that returns to the theme of the outcast who animates her famous novel. Her handling of the theme in Frankenstein reshaped the course of the fantastic, leading the way toward science fiction, presenting an influential image of the modern, sympathetic monster and demonstrating the ability of the genre to frame profound philosophical speculations in its presentation of the impossible....

Two Horror classics perfect for a dark and stormy night. In Mary Shelley's tale of bio-engineering gone horribly wrong, Victor Frankenstein uses body parts of the dead to bring a creature to life. When Frankenstein abandons his experiment in horror, the Monster embarks on a quest for ultimate revenge. In Bram Stoker's timeless gothic vampire romance, young solicitor Jonathan Harker must shield his fiancée Mina from the predations of the insatiable...

A young idealistic student neglects his family and friends for an obsessive quest to harness the power of life itself. Victor Frankenstein's desperate struggle to escape the unintended consequences of his success comes to take over his life. Mary Shelley's novel is more than the horror story of a brutish monster made famous in the movies. It is an insightful and disturbing gothic novel that encompasses philosophy, religion, science fiction, and psychological...

In the title story, a knight living alone in his isolated mountain fortress shows hospitality toward two pilgrims who appear from the mountains seeking shelter. Entreated to tell them of his sorrow, the knight unburdens himself and relates a tragic tale of love and loss. Resigned to the bitter fate that life has dealt him, the knight is unaware of the true nature of the two young people' s pilgrimage, until a revelation transforms his understanding...