Description
Book SynopsisExplores Mary Shelley as an important religious thinker of the Romantic period. Analyzes her creative engagement with contemporary religious controversies and uncovers a belief system that was both influenced by and profoundly different from those of her male Romantic counterparts.
Trade Review“Religion Around Mary Shelley is a valuable addition to Mary Shelley scholarship, and it can also stand on its own as superb scholarship in the field of Romanticism. Undergraduates writing honors theses, graduate students writing seminar papers, and scholars interested in the intersection of Romantic literature and religion will find this volume accessible and useful.”
—Eric Bontempo Reading Religion
“The enthusiastic recovery of female Romantic writers and the revaluing of prose vis-à-vis poetry means that Shelley is now recognized as a major Romantic-era figure. Airey’s book participates in this now well-established revisionist tradition, but by focusing on religion she is able to add something that earlier accounts have tended to miss or to underplay.”
—Colin Jager Women's Writing
“Airey makes unexpected connections between Mary Shelley and religious history, lending nuance to today’s arguments for Shelley's unique contributions to Romanticism and contemporary thought. In this fascinating, accessible book, readers will find their expectations challenged, with current debates expanded and sometimes redirected.”
—Caroline McCracken-Flesher,author of The Doctor Dissected: A Cultural Autopsy of the Burke and Hare Murders
“Religion Around Mary Shelley provides an excellent overview of the strands of religious discourse in England during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and their influence on Mary Shelley’s works. Tracing Shelley’s perspective on religion from doubt bordering on atheism (like her husband and father) to an understanding of spirituality centered on domesticity and family connections, this book represents a significant contribution to scholarship on Shelley as well as scholarship on gender and Romanticism in general.”
—Orianne Smith,author of Romantic Women Writers, Revolution and Prophecy: Rebellious Daughters, 1786 -1826
“With remarkable clarity, energy, and scope, Airey performs a real service for students and scholars of Mary Shelley. Spanning the full range of her career, Religion Around Mary Shelley takes the reader beyond the biography and into the language and inner life of a writer profoundly engaged with skepticism and faith in a rapidly changing world unsettled by the disturbing possibility that God was absent.”
—Daniel E. White,author of Early Romanticism and Religious Dissent
“Jennifer L. Airey writes eloquently about Shelley’s faith and her complex relationship with the various discourses around religion current in the early nineteenth century. Historically grounded and deeply informed, Religion Around Mary Shelley presents a welcome emphasis on many of Shelley’s lesser-studied works and later works, giving us a fuller picture of a writer for whom the creative process of thought and composition was deeply inflected by her rational imagination.”
—Jacqueline Labbe,author of Romantic Visualities: Landscape, Gender, and Romanticism
“Gaining an understanding of Shelley’s development across her life is important; Airey has combined the insight provided by Shelley’s journals and letters with excellent analysis of her canon to illuminate her trajectory concerning religious faith.”
—Staci Stone Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature
“Airey successfully recontextualizes Shelley and shifts the scholarly frame for studying Shelley and her engagement with her famous family’s complex and diverse religious background.”
—Samara Cahill Eighteenth-Century Fiction
“This helpful work will serve as a catalyst for further investigation of religion in Shelley’s writings.”
—Lisa Vargo European Romantic Review
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
Introduction
1. Religion Around Romanticism
2. Religion Around Mary Shelley
3. Doubt
4. Despair
5. Domesticity
Conclusion: On Ghosts
Notes
Works Cited
Index
