the daughter of two persons of distinguished literary celebrity
Although Mary Shelley publishes
this revision of her novel pseudonymously, as by "The Author of The
Last Man, Perkin Warbeck, &C. &C.," she writes as
though she had signed her full name to the title page, speaking familiarly
of her husband toward the end of
the Introduction as "Shelley" (see Introduction 12) and here casting her
parents, William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, as almost
legendary, if historical, figures whom she need not bother to name.
Constrained to keep the Shelley name out of the press by the meager
allowance Sir Timothy Shelley had
reluctantly settled upon his grandson, and thus remaining, as her opening
paragraph indicates, "very averse to bringing [her]self forward in print"
(see Introduction 1), Mary Shelley
nonetheless goes out of her way here to establish her major credentials as
an artist and her strong claim to public notice. An appearance of modesty
to cloak an unladylike presumption is a standard ploy of women writers at
this time.
