Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft & Mary Shelley Paperback – February 2, 2016

This dual biography of Mary Wollstonecraft and her daughter Mary Shelley utterly enthralled me. Both were talented, groundbreaking, independent thinking women, they each had drama and difficulties in their lives worthy of a Brontë novel, and between them they knew intimately some of the most interesting people involved with Romantic literature and radical political thought from the French Revolution through to the mid-Victorian years.Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin was born into a poor family with a very difficult, sometimes violent father, but Wollstonecraft was at least as spirited as he was and she struggled to surmount the boundaries gender and poverty put on her life in every way she could, eventually becoming a leading progressive thinker and the author of several influential books, including A Vindication of the Rights of Women. She loved passionately but refused the traditional roles women were expected to embrace at the time, so she married the political philosopher William Godwin late in life and only reluctantly. Wollstonecraft died days after giving birth to the daughter named for her, so it was through her extensive writings that Mary Godwin Shelley came to esteem, cherish, and love her mother.While still a teenager Mary Shelley began writing Frankenstein, a social commentary many consider the first science fiction novel, while holed up in Switzerland with a crowd that included Lord Byron. Like her parents she rejected social conventions about love, life, and marriage and at sixteen she scandalized her more staid contemporaries by running away with the already married poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, though that particular rebellion she came to regret because it hurt so many people. Mary longed for and looked up to her mother, using her mother's writings as guideposts for her own life, and that reverence was shared by her husband, her stepsister, Lord Byron, and many of Mary's other peers.Romantic Outlaws is written in a back and forth chronology, with chapters about the two women alternating, so the section about Wollstonecraft's early life is followed by one about her daughter at a similar age. I thought this might be confusing, especially since they're both named Mary, but their circumstances were different enough that it was usually simple to keep track of who I was reading about, and structuring the book that way makes it easy to compare the lives of the women, which adds even more interest to their stories.The book is well researched and documented with notes, but far from being a dry recitation of facts I found it quite compelling. Many of the chapters even end in what might almost be called cliffhangers, a technique that definitely kept me highly engaged.Before reading this biography both Marys were more symbols to me than women with families, lovers, personal trials and private doubts, but Charlotte Gordon illuminates the hearts and minds of her subjects and succeeds at bringing the two women and the era they lived in to life. William Godwin, Percy Shelley, and Lord Byron are among the people who are also well rendered, and many other fascinating people spend time on the book's pages, including Coleridge, Keats, and John and Abigail Adams.Saying it's engrossing is almost an understatement--I don't remember ever finding a biography so hard to put down. I read an advanced review ebook copy of this book supplied by the publisher through NetGalley, but I've already preordered my own copy hardback edition of Romantic Outlaws.

What Mary Wollstonecraft is most known for, these days, are two things: having written A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, and for having giving birth to Mary Godwin, who went on to become Mary Shelley, wife of poet Percy Shelley and author of Frankenstein. The elder Mary died within days of the birth of the younger, her second child but her first legitimate one. If (like me) this is as much or maybe even more than you already knew about both Marys, Charlotte Gordon’s work will introduce you to two legitimately fascinating women. Gordon structures her book in alternating chapters following each Mary, which helps her build the parallels between them: each one followed her heart and made choices that were wildly outside the bounds of what was considered socially acceptable for women in their time. Wollstonecraft, radicalized by her father’s abuse of his entire family into believing that women are people and should be treated like same, made a living as a teacher and then as a writer, went to Paris to see the French Revolution firsthand, refused to leave even when the heads started coming off, fell in love and had a child outside of marriage, published several successful books…and then came back to her native England, where she fell in love with a fellow radical political philosopher William Godwin. They married when she became pregnant despite such an action being outside of both of their ideals. Mary Godwin grew up revering the memory of her lost mother, fought with her stepmother, ran away with her father’s already-married benefactor Percy Shelley at only 16 years old (and brought her stepsister along), had a child out of wedlock and lived through that child’s death, had a second child out of wedlock, made friends with Lord Byron, wrote Frankenstein, got married in an ill-fated attempt to help her husband look more respectable as he fought to gain custody of his children after his first wife’s suicide, argued constantly with her stepsister who almost certainly at some point was sleeping with Percy, had more children, lost more children, and then lived through her husband’s death by drowning. Both women found themselves on the outs with polite society. Both women made some objectively bad decisions. But both were remarkable in their refusal to bow to the social pressure to conform to expectations despite the very real consequences they experienced for that refusal: money woes, in particular, were constant parts of their lives. The structure, switching back and forth between Wollstonecraft and Shelley, worked well for me. Not only did it make clearer the similarities in the ways the two women chose to live their lives, but it also helped keep the book from feeling like it was dragging…always a risk when the page count gets over 600 (it’s close to 550 pages of actual text before references). Despite its length, though, I found Gordon’s writing refreshingly unstuffy. She refuses to engage in speculation for periods where the record is thinner, but neither does she indulge in it wildly. She presents the most supported ideas, presents some short arguments for which of those she believes and why, and moves on. I can’t pretend it didn’t start dragging near the end or never bored me, but for the most part it was lively, interesting, and informative. I enjoyed it and would recommend it!

Before the feminist movement, and before even the suffragettes, came the mother and daughter of this dual biography. This is a history book, but written in story-mode which would make it more appealing to non-history readers.I loved this book, not only for the historical feminist and socio-political underpinnings. The book provided amazing and unique insight into some of the most famous and significant writers and poets of the times, whose lives were intertwined and influenced by the times, and by each other.In addition is the examination of historical events, as experienced by the two Marys. For instance, the French Revolution, which Mary Wollstonecraft lived through while in Paris. She risked her own life at the time by writing about what she saw and experienced.This is a history book, and so at times I found it dry and difficult to read. I read a couple of other books in between, but I kept being drawn back to Romantic Outlaws and I’m so glad I did. I felt that I had a responsibility to share in the lives of these women, because ultimately all women benefit from their bravery, and of those who followed in their footsteps.