07/09/2026
We are very excited to share yet another addition to the Key Popular Women Writers Series: congratulations to Susan Civale on the publication of Mary Shelley! 🎉
By comparing Shelley’s early and late publications, putting her in dialogue with her bestselling female contemporaries, and drawing on archival material to contextualise her contributions to the periodical press, this study reveals previously unseen continuities in her work and affinities with other women writers. It pays particular attention to the strategies Shelley developed to navigate political, personal, and financial constraints whilst posing challenges to the ideologies and practices that oppress women and undermine social progress. These strategies include her use of covertly transgressive female characters, her innovations in narrative structure, her attention to women’s relationships, her complex and varied deployment of auto/biographical material, and her unrelenting emphasis on sympathy and sociality.
