'I am in a strange state of mind. I am alone—quite alone—in the world—the blight of misfortune has passed over me and withered me; I know that I am about to die and I feel happy—joyous—'
The eponymous heroine of Mathilda narrates a tale of incestuous love from her deathbed. Her father's suicide by drowning, and her relationship with a gifted young poet, both contribute to her emotional withdrawal and lonely demise.
This edition of Shelley's second novel, transcribed and introduced by Deanna Koretsky, explores the work both as a complex portrayal of taboo desires and as an intergenerational story of reckoning with the horrors of racism and patriarchy. Mathilda is often read as biographical, but this edition also highlights the issues of justice, gender, and rights. Illuminating Shelley's evolving views on activism and social reform, sexual fluidity, and the racial implications of her feminist politics, Koretsky uncovers Shelley's deep skepticism about the capacity of English society to adapt to changing demographics and bring about a more just world.
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A new edition of Mary Shelley's second novel Mathilda, which remained unpublished until 1959 due to its themes of suicide and incest. The introduction examines the novel as both a complex exploration of taboo desires and an intergenerational story of reckoning with the horrors of racism and patriarchy.
Introduction
Note on the Text
Select Bibliography
A Chronology of Mary Shelley
MATHILDA
Appendix A. 'The Mourner,' by Mary Shelley (1829)
Appendix B. 'The Fields of Fancy,' by Mary Shelley (1819)
Appendix C. 'The Cave of Fancy,' by Mary Wollstonecraft (ca. 1788)
Appendix D. Letter to Lafayette, 11 November 1830
Appendix E. from Lodore, by Mary Shelley (1835)
Explanatory Notes
Deanna P. Koretsky is Associate Professor of English at Spelman College, where she teaches and writes on critical race and gender studies, literatures in English of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and popular culture. Her first book, Death Rights: Romantic Suicide, Race, and the Bounds of Liberalism (2021), shows how cultural representations of suicide inherited from the nineteenth century continue to reinforce anti-Blackness in the modern world. Her work has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, UNCF/Mellon, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Rockefeller Foundation, and other prestigious grants and fellowships. In addition to her solo work as a scholar, Koretsky is a founding member of the Bigger 6 Collective.
