Lives of the Most Eminent Literary and Scientific Men
Her extensive knowledge of history and languages, her ability to tell a gripping biographical narrative, and her interest in the burgeoning field of feminist historiography are reflected in these works.
[2] Dionysius Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia, published between 1829 and 1846, was one of the most successful of these enterprises, which also included John Murray's Family Library and the publications of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.
[3] Although intended for the "general reader", the series was aimed specifically at the middle class rather than the masses: each volume cost six shillings, prohibiting purchase by the poor.
[19] Written during the last productive decade of Mary Shelley's career,[21] her contributions fill about three-quarters of these five volumes[22] and reveal her to be a professional woman of letters.
[23] They demonstrate her knowledge of several languages and historical research covering several centuries, her ability to tell a gripping biographical narrative, and her interest in the burgeoning field of feminist historiography.
[24] She "wrote with many books to hand – reading (or rereading) some, consulting others, cross-referring, interweaving abridged and paraphrased source material with her own comment".
[25] Shelley combined secondary sources with memoir and anecdote and included her own judgments, a biographical style made popular by the 18th-century critic Samuel Johnson in his Lives of the Poets (1779–81).
[26] She describes this technique in her "Life of Metastasio": It is from passages such as these, interspersed in his letters, that we can collect the peculiar character of the man – his difference from others – and the mechanism of being that rendered him the individual that he was.
Such, dr Johnson [sic] remarks, is the true end of biography, and he recommends the bringing forward of minute, yet characteristic details, as essential to this style of history; to follow which precept has been the aim and desire of the writer of these pages.
[34] She also praises societies that are progressive with regard to gender relations—she wrote, for example, "No slur was cast by the [Renaissance era] Italians on feminine accomplishments ... Where abstruse learning was a fashion among men, they were glad to find in their friends of the other sex, minds educated to share their pursuits".
[37] Her belief that these domestic influences would improve society, and that women could be at the forefront of them, ties her approach to that of other early feminist historians such as Mary Hays and Anna Jameson.
[22] The three-volume Lives of the Most Eminent Literary and Scientific Men of Italy, Spain and Portugal contains numerous biographies of writers and thinkers of the 14th to 18th centuries.
[47] Shelley had gained much of her knowledge of these authors in Italy when she was researching her historical novel Valperga (1823); the rest she obtained from her own books or those of her father, the philosopher William Godwin.
She writes, "Mary Shelley's objectives in the Italian Lives were to gather what had been said by these authors and about them and to infuse the work with her own judgements on their interest and credibility.
For example, her analysis of the cavalier servente system in Italy, which allowed married women to take lovers, was rooted in an understanding that many marriages at the time were made not for love, but for profit.
According to Mazzeo, Montgomery's biographies, which draw a picture of the subject's character and incorporate autobiographical material, are written in a "digressive though not unengaging manner".
Mazzeo writes that the "commentary on both volumes was mixed and often contradictory, but on balance positive; prose style, organisation and use of source materials were the three most often identified points of discussion".
According to Mazzeo, the reviewer "notes, in particular, her efforts to question conventional assumptions about Machiavelli by returning to autobiographical materials and credits her with originality on this point".
During the two or three years that Mary Shelley spent writing the Spanish and Portuguese Lives from 1834 or 1835 to 1837, she also wrote a novel, Falkner (1837), experienced the death of her father, William Godwin, started a biography of him, and moved to London after her son, Percy, entered Trinity College, Cambridge.
"[58] While living in Harrow, she refused to go to the British Library in London, writing: "I would not if I could – I do not like finding myself a stray bird among strange men in a character assimililating [sic] to their own".
While some scholars see her refusal to work there as a mark of "feminist protest" others see it as "matter of comfort and practicality", since the reading rooms were "noisy, badly lit, and poorly ventilated".
[63] Shelley's biographies begin by describing the author, offering examples of their writings in the original language and in translation, and end by summarising their "beauties and defects".
[65] Overall, the Spanish Lives, according to Vargo, "tells a story of the survival of genius and moral independence in spite of oppression by public institutions, both individually and nationally".
The composition of her memoirs was the last deed of her life, save the leaving of it—and it was a noble one—disclosing the nature of the soil that gave birth to so much virtue; teaching women how to be great, without foregoing either the duties or charms of their sex; and exhibiting to men an example of feminine excellence, from which they may gather confidence, that if they dedicate themselves to useful and heroic tasks, they will find helpmates in the other sex to sustain them in their labours and share their fate.
[76] No other substantial projects occupied her during this time and research materials were easily accessible; she even subscribed to a specialist circulating library to acquire books.
"[23] Orr compares Shelley to the 19th-century historical writers Lady Morgan, Frances Trollope, Anna Jameson, and Agnes and Eliza Strickland.
[39] Shelley argues that women are as intellectually capable as men, but lack a sufficient education and are trapped by social systems such as marriage that restrict their rights.
[84] She describes Roland through traditionally feminine roles: She was her husband's friend, companion, amanuensis; fearful of the temptations of the world, she gave herself up to labour; she soon became absolutely necessary to him at every moment, and in all the incidents of his life; her servitude was thus sealed; now and then it caused a sigh; but the holy sense of duty reconciled her to every inconvenience.
[86] Shelley's most overt feminist statement in the French Lives comes when she criticises Jean-Jacques Rousseau's novel Julie, or the New Heloise (1761), writing "his ideas ... of a perfect life are singularly faulty.
[80] The volumes were bootlegged in the United States by Lea and Blanchard of Philadelphia and reviewed by Edgar Allan Poe in Graham's Lady's and Gentleman's Magazine in 1841.
