Charlotte Gordon Bücher

English feminist Mary Wollstonecraft and her daughter, author Mary Shelley, led extraordinary yet parallel lives, despite never knowing each other. Both women became renowned writers, fell in love with brilliant but flawed men, and navigated the challenges of single motherhood. They lived in exile, fought for societal recognition, and contemplated the essence of life. Their lives were marked by defiance against societal norms: Wollstonecraft pursued pirates in Scandinavia and traveled to Paris during the Revolution, while Shelley eloped with a married man and confronted bandits in Naples. Wollstonecraft championed women's liberty, authoring the groundbreaking The Vindication of the Rights of Woman, which ignited Romanticism and inspired future writers, including Shelley. At just nineteen, Shelley traveled through Italy with Percy Shelley and Lord Byron, where she penned Frankenstein. She pushed literary boundaries and later edited her husband's poetry, solidifying his posthumous legacy. This work unites the stories of two visionary women who, though separated by time and circumstance, share a profound literary and feminist heritage.

Famous for her novel Frankenstein, Mary Shelley was also infamous in her own time for breaking social and literary conventions, and taking a political and philosophical stance advocating for the rights of women. Charlotte Gordon explores the context and key themes in the life and work of this courageous, complicated, and accomplished woman.