Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary

Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft & Mary Shelley

NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER â€¢Â NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE SEATTLE TIMES

This groundbreaking dual biography brings to life a pioneering English feminist and the daughter she never knew. Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley have each been the subject of numerous biographies, yet no one has ever examined their lives in one bookâ€”until now. In Romantic Outlaws, Charlotte Gordon reunites the trailblazing author who wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Woman and the Romantic visionary who gave the world Frankensteinâ€”two courageous women who should have shared their lives, but instead shared a powerful literary and feminist legacy.

In 1797, less than two weeks after giving birth to her second daughter, Mary Wollstonecraft died, and a remarkable life spent pushing against the boundaries of societyâ€™s expectations for women came to an end. But another was just beginning. Wollstonecraftâ€™s daughter Mary was to follow a similarly audacious path. Both women had passionate relationships with several men, bore children out of wedlock, and chose to live in exile outside their native country. Each in her own time fought against the injustices women faced and wrote books that changed literary history.

The private lives of both Marys were nothing less than the stuff of great Romantic drama, providing fabulous material for Charlotte Gordon, an accomplished historian and a gifted storyteller. Taking readers on a vivid journey across revolutionary France and Victorian England, she seamlessly interweaves the lives of her two protagonists in alternating chapters, creating a book that reads like a richly textured historical novel. Gordon also paints unforgettable portraits of the men in their lives, including the mercurial genius Percy Shelley, the unbridled libertine Lord Byron, and the brilliant radical William Godwin.

â€œBrave, passionate, and visionary, they broke almost every rule there was to break,â€ Gordon writes of Wollstonecraft and Shelley. A truly revelatory biography, Romantic Outlaws reveals the defiant, creative lives of this daring mother-daughter pair who refused to be confined by the rigid conventions of their era.

Praise for Romantic Outlaws

â€œ[An] impassioned dual biography . . . Gordon, alternating between the two chapter by chapter, binds their lives into a fascinating whole. She shows, in vivid detail, how mother influenced daughter, and how the daughterâ€™s struggles mirrored the motherâ€™s.â€â€”The Boston Globe
Country USA
Brand Random House Trade Paperbacks
Manufacturer Random House Trade Paperbacks
Binding Paperback
ItemPartNumber 9780812980479
Color Black
ReleaseDate 2016-02-02
UnitCount 1
EANs 9780812980479

Country	USA
Brand	Random House Trade Paperbacks
Manufacturer	Random House Trade Paperbacks
Binding	Paperback
ItemPartNumber	9780812980479
Color	Black
ReleaseDate	2016-02-02
UnitCount	1
EANs	9780812980479

Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft & Mary Shelley

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