Title: Romantic Outlaws Author: Charlotte Gordon
Published: April 28, 2015
Genre(s): Nonfiction
Page Count: 649
Rating:
Summary from Goodreads:Although mother and daughter, these two brilliant women never knew one another—Wollstonecraft died of an infection in 1797 at the age of thirty-eight, a week after giving birth. Nevertheless their lives were so closely intertwined, their choices, dreams and tragedies so eerily similar, it seems impossible to consider one without the other.
Both women became famous writers; fell in love with brilliant but impossible men; and were single mothers who had children out of wedlock; both lived in exile; fought for their position in society; and thought deeply about how we should live. And both women broke almost every rigid convention there was to break: Wollstonecraft chased pirates in Scandinavia. Shelley faced down bandits in Naples. Wollstonecraft sailed to Paris to witness the Revolution. Shelley eloped in a fishing boat with a married man. Wollstonecraft proclaimed that women’s liberty should matter to everyone.
Not only did Wollstonecraft declare the rights of women, her work ignited Romanticism. She inspired Coleridge, Wordsworth and a whole new generation of writers, including her own daughter, who – with her young lover Percy Shelley – read Wollstonecraft’s work aloud by her graveside. At just nineteen years old and a new mother herself, Mary Shelley composed Frankenstein whilst travelling around Italy with Percy and roguish Lord Byron (who promptly fathered a child by Mary’s stepsister). It is a seminal novel, exploring the limitations of human nature and the power of invention at a time of great religious and scientific upheaval. Moreover, Mary Shelley would become the editor of her husband’s poetry after his early death—a feat of scholarship that did nothing less than establish his literary reputation.
Romantic Outlaws brings together a pair of visionary women who should have shared a life, but who instead shared a powerful literary and feminist legacy. This is inventive, illuminating, involving biography at its best.
Mary Wollstonecraft is one of the most important, defining figures of my (admittedly short) life. I first encountered her writing when I was in my early teens, and it very much helped me to come to terms with my own beliefs and my sense of place in society. Reading a biography about Wollstonecraft was very much on my To Do ASAP list. But Romantic Outlaws is not only about Mary Wollstonecraft—it’s also about her younger daughter, Mary Shelley, an accomplished (and in many respects, more popular in the modern era) writer and editor in her own right. Prior to reading this book, I wouldn’t have considered myself much a fan of Shelley, but I definitely appreciate what Charlotte Gordon has done with this biography, which is to draw parallels between the two women’s lives and expose the influence Wollstonecraft had on Shelley, even though she died only ten days after childbirth.
As Gordon writes in her introduction, “Romantic Outlaws alternates between Wollstonecraft and Shelley, allowing readers to see the echo of Wollstonecraft in Shelley’s letters, journals, and novels, and demonstrating how often Wollstonecraft addressed herself to the future, to the daughter she planned to raise. There are many comprehensive biographies of both women, but Romantic Outlaws sheds new light on both Wollstonecraft and Shelley by exploring the intersections between their lives. And the intersections are many.”
Altogether, the author’s stated goal for this book seems like an impressive endeavour. I haven’t read any other biographies on either Mary Wollstonecraft or Mary Shelley, so I can’t attest to how Romantic Outlaws compares, but I think that Gordon definitely offers readers a comprehensive view of both women’s lives, and the side-by-side alternating narrative was fascinating, and it seems only right that two such important early feminists are featured together in one volume and ascribed the same level of importance.
In terms of readability, I was massively impressed by this biography. I enjoy nonfiction, but I would only rarely use the term “compelling” to describe it—but that’s certainly how I would classify Romantic Outlaws. The combination of Gordon’s clear, intelligent prose and the already fascinating topic made for an unputdownable reading experience. And when you consider that the book is nearly 700 pages long (including endnotes), that becomes even more noteworthy. I was honestly surprised by how engaging and exciting this book was. The author hit the perfect balance of historical exposition and primary source material, so that I was perfectly confident of the book’s veracity even as I was completely swept away by the stories of mother and daughter.
I certainly feel that I learned a lot from this book. My admiration for Wollstonecraft as a thinker and philosopher grew quite a lot, and I think this book gave me a new appreciation for her contributions to the fight for women’s rights. Mary Shelley’s adventures with her husband, family, and often Lord Byron were fascinating as well. I developed a new respect for Percy Bysshe Shelley on account of his devotion to feminism, which Mary Shelley later tried to minimize (along with his atheism and anarchist sentiments) in order to court public favor after his death. I also loved how Gordon contrasted Mary Shelley’s editing of her husband’s work with his contributions to Frankenstein—contemporary critics tried to claim that Percy Bysshe Shelley had done all of his wife’s writing for her, but no one suggested the opposite. Odd, that.
In general, I also feel that Romantic Outlaws strikes a nice balance of tone. While there are a lot of “dramatic” moments in both mother and daughter’s lives (particularly Shelley’s), the book never feels too gossipy. Certainly, it’s hard to talk about the Shelleys’ so-called “League of Incest” in strictly academic terms and still keep readers’ interest, but I didn’t feel like Gordon was overdoing it. By providing a wealth of insight into personality and motivation, I felt that I had a real sense of who these people were, and I was able to respect their ideals even as I was amused by their dramas. (Like I said, I’m now extremely interested in Percy Bysshe Shelley because of this book, whereas before I never even thought of him or cared about him one way or the other.)
Engrossing, fascinating, and superbly researched, Charlotte Gordon’s Romantic Outlaws brings to life two much-maligned early feminists. I feel that I learned a great deal from this book and that I’ve developed new admiration for both Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley. Beyond that, this book was entertaining and exciting, far from the dry slog that one generally thinks of when picturing Romantic-era historical nonfiction.
