Description
Book Synopsis***AS READ ON BBC RADIO 4***
NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER
'A gripping account of the heartbreaks and triumphs of two of history's most formidable female intellectuals, Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley.
Trade Review[A] unique double biography...
An excellent and poignant book whose heroines breathe in its pages. -- David Aaronovitch * The Times *
A mother and daughter who changed not only the way we think, but the way we are… extraordinary women, a dozen decades ahead of their time…
Romantic Outlaws enables readers to compare the different ways in which these two remarkable women confronted their tragically different destinies… [A]
thoughtful, intelligent, deeply-felt book’ -- Miranda Seymour * Sunday Times *
A gripping account of the heartbreaks and triumphs of two of history's most formidable female intellectuals, Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley.
Gordon has reunited mother and daughter through biography, beautifully weaving their narratives for the first time. -- Amanda Foreman * author of A World on Fire *
Full of enriching paradox…
Charlotte Gordon has managed to produce that rare thing, a work of genuinely popular history... It works beautifully. -- Melissa Benn * New Statesman *
Wollstonecraft and Shelley were
extraordinary women who led sensational lives. They were Romantic revolutionaries…
retelling their story cannot fail to captivate and provoke. * Spectator *
Unique...
Marvellous, passionate stuff. -- David Aaronovitch * Books of the Year, Times *
An exceptional achievement -- Michael Morpugo * Daily Telegraph *
Read and be seriously inspired. * Stylist *
An
innovative dual biography that foregrounds the writing of
two women who disregarded the moral codes of their eras and shaped their own destinies. Gordon’s parallel mapping of their lives reveals
fascinating similarities in the ways writing sustained, and sometimes saved, them both. * Financial Times *
Mother and daughter shadow and reveal each other. The retelling emphasises the extent to which Shelley’s life was shaped by her mother’s legacy but here is underlined in thought-provoking ways... In Gordon’s narrative,
[Wollstonecraft and Shelley] appear at their best and bravest. * Observer *
