Mary Shelley, Matilda

Graham Allen (University College Cork)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.06: English Writing and Culture of the Romantic Period, 1789-1837.
Vol. editors: Daniel Cook (University of Dundee), Daniel Robinson (Widener University)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1819 - 1820

Places

England (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novella

Resources

Mary Shelley’s Matilda, written between August 1819 and early 1820, was not published until Elizbathe Nitchie’s edition in 1959 (Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press). The story of the novella’s composition and subsequent neglect (with regard to publication) is a strange one and in many ways still dominates its critical reception. First drafted as “The Fields of Fancy” in response to Wollstonecraft’s fragment “The Cave of Fancy,” Mary Shelley rewrote her text as Matilda (for both texts see The Novels and Selected Writings of Mary Shelley, 8 Vols. Gen. Ed. Nora Crook, Matilda, Dramas, Reviews & Essays, Prefaces and Notes, Vol.2., ed. Pamela Clemit, London: Pickering and Chatto, …

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

2616 words

Citation: Allen, Graham. "Matilda". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 02 February 2004 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=14898, accessed 04 December 2024.]

Save this article