Mary Shelley

De: Miranda Seymour

Narrado por: Sandra Duncan

‘The most dazzling biography of a female writer to have come my way for a decade…' – Financial Times

‘To be savoured for its vivid and sympathetic recreation of the tragic life and brilliant times of the gifted Mary Shelley’ – Times Literary Supplement

‘Brilliant and enthralling' – Independent On Sunday

'Wonderfully vivid' – Spectator

The definitive and richly woven biography of Mary Shelley, in celebration of the 200th anniversary of Frankenstein

The creator of the world’s most famous outsider became one herself . . .

There is no more dramatic scene in literary history than the stormy night by Lake Geneva when Byron, Claire Clairmont, Polidori and the Shelleys met to talk of horror and the unexplained. From that emerged Frankenstein, a monster who has haunted imaginations for two hundred years.

Miranda Seymour illustrates the rich and unexplored life of Mary Shelley. Everything from her childhood to her tempestuous relationship with Percy Shelley; Seymour brings to life the brilliant mind that created Frankenstein through unexplored and intriguing sources.

The Mary Shelley we meet here is a woman we can engage with and understand. Her world, so rich in its settings and its cast of characters, seems drawn from a novel. She, at its centre, is flawed, brave, generous, and impetuous, a woman whose dark and brilliant imagination gave us a myth which seems ever more potent in our own era.

Reseñas de la Crítica

‘The most dazzling biography of a female writer to have come my way for a decade… Here, for the first time, Shelley steps off the page as a living, thinking, suffering woman, fraught and caught in the web of her own intelligence.’ (Jackie Wullschlager)

‘To be savoured for its vivid and sympathetic recreation of the tragic life and brilliant times of the gifted Mary Shelley.’

‘Brilliant and enthralling, this portrait illuminates Mary’s life in many unexpected ways.’

‘A wonderfully vivid, human and learned portrait of the woman who created Frankenstein, married Shelley, and, amazingly, survived.’

'Mary Shelley, Miranda Seymour’s affectionate and well-written biography, concisely sketches the background of scientific inquiry that influenced Shelley’s early intellectual development… Seymour keenly brings out how fraught Mary Shelley’s own life was with tragedies of childbirth and infant mortality… In 1818, the Shelleys moved to Italy…where Byron now was. They formed a tense and inbred circle, sharply evoked by Seymour: the women eyeing each other jealously, each serially or simultaneously in love with Shelley or Byron or both… Miranda Seymour is a novelist as well as an experienced biographer… She has vivid narrative gifts and a perceptive understanding of the main personalities.' (New York Times Notable Books)

'Splendid biography.'

'Miranda Seymour’s lucid biography arrives as the general reader’s guide to Mary Shelley’s ascent to academic cult status… Seymour is persuasive.'

'Gracefully sweeping through the dramatic life of the woman behind history’s most legendary monster, Miranda Seymour unbuttons a world of brilliant literary figures in Mary Shelley and re-creates the imaginative time in which Frankenstein was born… The Mary we meet here, brilliantly brought to life by Seymour from previously unexplored sources, is flawed, brave, generous, and impetuous.'

'I envy any reader of this excellent biography who happens not to be very familiar with the lives of Shelley and the girl who eloped with him when she was sixteen.' (Diana Athill)

'The most thorough account of Shelley’s life…eminently readable.'

'A harrowing life, wonderfully retold.' (Washington Post Best Books of the Year)

'Seymour is adept at capturing the cultural climate and social context of the early nineteenth century in the major English and Italian settings of Shelley’s life story. She has done hard and valuable work in finely combining the correspondence of the many players in this story, and reconstructing the likeliest version of events---no mean feat with a circle, such as Shelley’s, that was rife with contention, backbiting and self-promotion.'

'One of the finest and most significant biographies of recent years.'

Great historian. Less than impressive subject.

As good a history of Mary Shelley as is possible. Frankly, her life was boring and her husband a terrible human being. However,I am very glad I listened to it, to get the facts straight on these two important people. I liked the narrator.

Brilliant, The Best Acount of Mary Shelley's Life

I am so glad audible has starting offering biographies of this intellectual quality. Miranda Seymour's bio is a little masterpiece, and well worth the listen, and Sandra Duncan reads it with excellence. You must read this if you are interested in the Shelley's, Mary Shelley's parents, William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, Romanticism, Frankenstein, sexuality, the historical reception of Mary Shelley, and a highly detailed yet never boring account of Mary's life. The book gives you a great understanding of the generational shift that occurred between the early Romantics, the later Romantics, and the popularizing Victorians. Although not academically pedantic, this book will teach you a tremendous amount, and i definitely wish i read it while studying the romantics at university, as it would have helped in many ways. But at 27 hours, you are in for a long listen, and I would thus recommend taking up a hobby (knitting, drawing, walking) while listening to this marvelous book.

Life Story of the young girl who wrote Frankenstein

It was a bit hard to follow. It’s a huge book. Although I learned much about her and the reader of the book was 100% awesome. I would have really appreciated the life of her from birth till young girl when she wrote it. That’s often fascinated me. What outward forces of history up to that point and even during the life of his father. Another words, anything and everything before she wrote it and her entire life perhaps only 25% of the story rather than 95% of the book. We all change so much from 15 to 70+ but the woman at 70+ is completely a different person than the young girl version of herself. Although we will not have letters, journals etc of her adult life we do have history and culture from her father’s life and then up to the age she wrote the story. Still an interesting story. But had I known the entire book before I started, I would have put the book aside early in the book about when she finished the writing and a bit further. Maybe about 15% of the book and I would be satisfied rather than read the entire book which was very long

Too much mouth noice

I purchased this both because I have a fasciation of and respect for Mary Shelley and because I was useing this for additional research for my masters. I could not finish listening to it. The mouth sounds and noises were intolerable. Not to mention how can I have faith in an audio production that didn’t catch that Ms. Duncan kept saying Don Juan with the J sound and not the H. Making the name sound more like an anti-Semitic jab(I know it wasn’t just saying it sounded as such) than a title of one of Byron’s poems. Very disappointed and glad it was a credit and not actual cash I spent on this.

Very detailed

This is not a book for a listener with only a casual interest in the subject. The number of people quoted, mentioned, and described is very confusing and it was difficult to keep straight their significance to the core of the subject. These details tend to obscure the personal story of Mary as a person rather than contribute the insight they obviously are meant to add. A background in early 19th century English literature would be helpful in understanding the book; unfortunately I have never studied that subject.