Welcome to 2025 on An Historian About Town! This will be a big year (and a big month) for the site as it is AHAT’s 10th anniversary. (And quite frankly, I think that is a pretty big accomplishment.) As it is Wednesday, we start off with a book recommendation! And as I’m prioritising books written by women, I knew I had to choose one of my favourites from last year. For our first of 2025, this week’s Book Bite: Romantic Outlaws by Charlotte Gordon!
Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley, Charlotte Gordon
This groundbreaking dual biography brings to life a pioneering English feminist and the daughter she never knew. Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley have each been the subject of numerous biographies, yet no one has ever examined their lives in one book–until now. In Romantic Outlaws, Charlotte Gordon reunites the trailblazing author who wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Woman and the Romantic visionary who gave the world Frankenstein–two courageous women who should have shared their lives, but instead shared a powerful literary and feminist legacy.
In 1797, less than two weeks after giving birth to her second daughter, Mary Wollstonecraft died, and a remarkable life spent pushing against the boundaries of society’s expectations for women came to an end. But another was just beginning. Wollstonecraft’s daughter Mary was to follow a similarly audacious path. Both women had passionate relationships with several men, bore children out of wedlock, and chose to live in exile outside their native country. Each in her own time fought against the injustices women faced and wrote books that changed literary history.
The private lives of both Marys were nothing less than the stuff of great Romantic drama, providing fabulous material for Charlotte Gordon, an accomplished historian and a gifted storyteller. Taking readers on a vivid journey across revolutionary France and Victorian England, she seamlessly interweaves the lives of her two protagonists in alternating chapters, creating a book that reads like a richly textured historical novel. Gordon also paints unforgettable portraits of the men in their lives, including the mercurial genius Percy Shelley, the unbridled libertine Lord Byron, and the brilliant radical William Godwin.
Why You Should Read This…
Both Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley are fascinating historical figures, but the large majority of attention that they receive is for their writing. While they were both talented authors who produced seminal works, their lives are also worth our attention.
Gordon’s choice to make this a dual biography is smart. Their lives dovetail so well into each other, although it might not seem obvious at first. The chapters alternate between mother and daughter, highlighting both their similarities and differences. (It took a tiny bit to get used to, but each chapter title includes years that make it clear which Mary is being covered.)
One aspect that stood out to me (and was absolutely on purpose) was the influence of the men in their lives, and the consequences of connecting with them. Both women suffered from romantic relationships with men who were otherwise worshipped. While that seems fairly obvious to us now, it would not have been in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries- both Marys paid the price for choices made by the men around them. They both were incredibly talented writers, though, and Gordon shows how they used those experiences to better their craft.
Even if you have not read Frankenstein or A Vindication of the Rights of Women, this is a must-read for anyone interested in literary history!
Is Romantic Outlaws by Charlotte Gordon on your to-read list?
Cheers,
The Historian
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