Religion Around Mary Shelley

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 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 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 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