I suppose this is a little like putting up a dairy on cats or hummingbirds. I hope it's not so far off topic that it annoys people, but... I found an article this morning, from the Daily Telegraph about a new book on Frankenstein. It’s written by a professor from the University of Deleware, Charles Robinson, one of the foremost experts on Mary Shelley in the US. It interests me, of course, because I have a book out—Requiem for the Author of Frankenstein—which I wrote about in June—it won an "Indie" Book award. Robinson's new book, The Original Frankenstein, makes the arguement that Percy Bysshe Shelley played such a significant role in the writing of Frankenstein that the authorship of the book should be listed as "Mary Shelley with Percy Bysshe Shelley." I don't agree—that's what this diary is about.
Robinson says he’s identified some 5000 changes made to Mary Shelley’s manuscript by Shelley before it was published. He studied the hand-writen text at the Bodleian in Oxford, not something I had access too, although I did study the facsimiles of their hand-written texts in Oxford, at the same library. (The Bodleian is an incredible place.) He also believes they wrote together in bed, using the same pen—which must mean that some kind of technology has been used to determine the instrument that penned the words. That would make a great scene—I wish I had written it! And there is the hint of such a shared intimacy in their writing in Requiem for the Author of Frankenstein.
It’s worth noting, however, that Mary Shelley worked on Frankenstein over the winter of 1816-1817, while she was living in Bath, mostly without Shelley. Mary was holed up near a very pregnant Claire Claremont (Mary’s stepsister), who was carrying Lord Byron’s child. Both women were staying out of sight; Bath was a place where it was easier to do so. This was the Bath of Jane Austen’s day, the city where the rich (and the not so rich) went to play. "A safer choice than London—for although the marriage market was drifting toward Brighton, Bath was still a city of young women looking for husbands, and young men looking for wives. Bath was exactly what was needed: a very good place to slip quietly into anonymity."
It was during the writing of Frankenstein that Mary’s half-sister, Fanny, and Harriet, Shelley’s abandoned wife (who was pregnant again), both killed themselves. Fanny by taking laudanum; Harriet by drowning herself. Shelley spent much of the winter in London with Leigh Hunt (and perhaps Harriet). He was gone a great deal. There are dozens of letters from Mary complaining of that fact, begging him to come to her.
Charles Robinson, as I said, is one of the most highly respected names in the world of academia when it comes to research on Mary Shelley. I’m not arguing that he’s wrong in saying that there wasn’t a great deal of back and forth between the Mary and Shelley over Frankenstein. He’s not the first to claim it, and obviously it's absolutely true. Shelley was a huge influence on Mary. I’m just not convinced that Shelley should be listed as an author, "with" or otherwise, as Robinson suggests. That is, unless we’re also going to list editor, Gordon Lish, as an author alongside Raymond Carver. And maybe Lish should be—Carver’s wife is arguing that Lish’s heavy hand tampered with Carver’s work too much. I’m just saying the same standard must applied to both.
I also want to point out that when I began researching Mary Shelley, back in 1990, both Books in Print, and the UC Berkeley Library, where I did most of my early research, conflated Mary Shelley (Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley) with her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft (author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman). They were shelved as one author, one woman.
I don’t want to see Mary Shelley diminished. As I’ve argued in Requiem for the Author of Frankenstein, I think Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein makes a dramatic statement about the enforced invisibility of 19th century women. And although I credit Shelley with some feminist understanding, I don’t believe he had the insight to say in Frankenstein, what Mary Shelley said about women and their irrelevance—a theme I find central not only to Frankenstein, but also to Mary Shelley's much-overlooked, Valperga, a historical novel set in 14th century Italy. I think it's ironic that Mary Shelley has been so invisible herself, with regards to Frankenstein. She has, unfortunately, proven her point in more ways then one: without an equal, archetypal value of both the masculine and the feminine in culture, you get life out of balance—and death and mayhem descending on the planet. (My interview with Kris Welsh on KPFA addresses this.)
Robinson’s research, it seems to me, must open up a whole discussion on nature of the author/editor relationship—what it should be, and how it should be credited. I would argue that Shelley was Mary’s editor in the same way that Gordon Lish was Raymond Carver’s. In fact, there are those who argue that Shelley’s influence, especially as he changed Mary’s more pedestrian language into flowery, poetic choices, was problematic—an interference.
And then there’s the little acknowledged fact that Mary Shelley influenced Shelley. She was the first person to collect, edit, and publish his poetry after his death. Frankly, it irks me, that so few in the world of academia place any importance on that, or on Mary Shelley’s contribution to Thomas Moore’s biography on Lord Byron, to which she contributed generously and anonymously.
So, there you have it! The Original Frankenstein has my attention. As a woman, I want to be part the discussion about Mary Shelley's place in literary history—that's why I wrote Requiem for the Author of Frankenstein, and why I wrote this diary. Mary Shelley is, after all, for better or worse, one of Shakespeare's Sisters.