Mathilda - (Mint Editions) by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Book Synopsis

Mathilda (1959) is a posthumous novella by English writer and Romantic Mary Shelley. Written as a means of self-distraction following the deaths of her young children in Italy, Mathilda is a work haunted by tragic loss. Unpublished for over a century, its posthumous appearance helped cement Shelley's reputation as a leading Romantic, an artist unafraid of confronting such themes and taboos as incest and suicide in her work.

Mathilda, named after its narrator, traces a young woman's troubled life from birth to her premature deathbed. Following her mother's death during childbirth and her father's subsequent abandonment, Mathilda is raised by her aunt in rural Loch Lomond, Scotland. A gifted reader and promising intellectual, she rises from her difficult circumstances to lead a relatively happy childhood. When, at the age of 16, her father reenters her life, the two reconnect and eventually move together to London. As she begins to receive suitors however, her father's strange jealousy and irrational behavior conceal a terrible secret. When he reveals his incestuous desires to Mathilda, she rejects him, resulting in his suicide and leaving her unmarried, orphaned, and financially unstable. Living in self-imposed exile, she befriends the similarly melancholy Woodville, a young widower and poet who does his best to care for her despite her crushing bouts of depression and frequent suicidal thoughts. Mathilda is an emotionally complex and ultimately difficult novella recognized for its controversial themes and for its parallels to Shelley's own tragic life.

This edition of Mary Shelley's Mathilda is a classic of English literature reimagined for modern readers.

Since our inception in 2020, Mint Editions has kept sustainability and innovation at the forefront of our mission. Each and every Mint Edition title gets a fresh, professionally typeset manuscript and a dazzling new cover, all while maintaining the integrity of the original book.

With thousands of titles in our collection, we aim to spotlight diverse public domain works to help them find modern audiences. Mint Editions celebrates a breadth of literary works, curated from both canonical and overlooked classics from writers around the globe.

From the Back Cover

A young woman recounts her tragic life story to her friend, a young man familiar with loss. Following her mother's death during childbirth, Mathilda was abandoned by her father and raised by her wealthy aunt. When her father came back into her life, however, events unfolded which irrevocably disrupted any normalcy she had reclaimed. Mathilda is a novella by Mary Shelley.