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foofers1622's review
4.0
I got sucked into The Wollstonecraft and Shelley circle after reading [b:Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Her Daughter Mary Shelley|22294061|Romantic Outlaws The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Her Daughter Mary Shelley|Charlotte Gordon|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1401077142s/22294061.jpg|41681472] by [a:Charlotte Gordon|535959|Charlotte Gordon|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1426802622p2/535959.jpg]. This book is a more detailed look into their early life and how tragic of a life it really was for Fanny Wollstonecraft.
lakecake's review
3.0
The actual subtitle of the book is "Fanny Wollstonecraft and the Shelley Circle," which is much more descriptive of what the book is actually about. So little is left of Fanny Wollstonecraft's correspondence and, really, her memory that it would be nearly impossible to give a full accounting of her life or death. The Wollstonecraft-Godwin-Shelleys had so much scandal in their surrounding them that Fanny's death was just one more problem that had to be covered up for propriety's sake. As a consequence, her name was torn off of her suicide note, her body was never claimed, her death was denied by her family in letters for months and sometimes even years afterward, and her name was essentially removed from all of the memoirs written about her family after her death.
For me, though, the real tragedy of this story, beyond even Fanny's suicide, was the sheer numbers of people whose lives were destroyed or made otherwise severely unpleasant by the whims of one man, Percy Bysshe Shelley. He destroyed people without thought, and then later re-wrote his personal history, oftentimes even in his own mind, to make it seem as though he were blameless. Worse yet, the people around him let him get away with it because he was a "genius." It makes you ask yourself whether things have changed all that much in our current "cult of celebrity."
For me, though, the real tragedy of this story, beyond even Fanny's suicide, was the sheer numbers of people whose lives were destroyed or made otherwise severely unpleasant by the whims of one man, Percy Bysshe Shelley. He destroyed people without thought, and then later re-wrote his personal history, oftentimes even in his own mind, to make it seem as though he were blameless. Worse yet, the people around him let him get away with it because he was a "genius." It makes you ask yourself whether things have changed all that much in our current "cult of celebrity."
lene_kretzsch's review
informative
reflective
sad
slow-paced
2.75
Clearly a labour of love for the author, this is in many ways a model biography: careful, thorough, sympathetic without indulging in adulation. Unfortunately, it's also mostly a crashing bore. Part of the dullness may be inherent to the book's main focus (Fanny Godwin, a rather unimportant cog in a much greater wheel of acquaintance) but part is the author's style. Only when Shelley appears on the scene does this story gain any interest as his natural charisma seems to power through even the dullest minutiae of finances and house-hunting. Given his distinctly inglorious role in this tragic tale, that seems all the sadder. While this book is likely a boon for scholars, I can't recommend it for the average reader.
henrygravesprince's review
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
3.0
Part of why this review has taken me so long to write after finishing this book is the fact that I’ve been trying to parse how to go about framing my opinions here. There’s no question that Janet Todd, the author, has done a lot of significant work in preserving and sharing Mary Wollstonecraft’s legacy, as well as important work for Shelleyan scholarship in general, and I don’t want to downplay that. I also would be wrong to ignore how significant it is that Todd is, as of now, the only person to write extensively on Fanny Godwin, and one of the few to touch more on Harriet Westbrook’s life and untimely death.
The edition I read had quite a few grammatical errors, particularly with punctuation; chances are those may have been an error of production (or of digitization) rather than of the author, which is unfortunate, but they happened often enough to grate on me.
Overall, I think it’s the writing style that just doesn’t jive with me. A lot of the gaps within the narrative of Fanny’s life have to be filled by speculation, but that causes a lot of insertion of authorial biases and potential historical misunderstandings. There are moments where it feels like the author’s own contempt for certain people in Fanny’s life is pushed more than any explanation of that — I don’t expect nonfiction to be soulless and without opinion, but I do wish that the book was clearer on those biases or at least dove moreso into those opinions if they needed to be included. There were parts where it felt like the author had a grudge against Mary Shelley, especially when touching on Mary’s teenage antics and mistakes, occasionally paired with small but irksome inaccuracies about Mary’s life & future being nestled in there.
There’s also just a strange amount of fatphobia in this book. If there’s an opportunity to mention someone’s weight, even tangential historical figures such as French kings, it is taken, and it is usually very cruelly done. It’s deeply out of place & kind of baffling.
The edition I read had quite a few grammatical errors, particularly with punctuation; chances are those may have been an error of production (or of digitization) rather than of the author, which is unfortunate, but they happened often enough to grate on me.
Overall, I think it’s the writing style that just doesn’t jive with me. A lot of the gaps within the narrative of Fanny’s life have to be filled by speculation, but that causes a lot of insertion of authorial biases and potential historical misunderstandings. There are moments where it feels like the author’s own contempt for certain people in Fanny’s life is pushed more than any explanation of that — I don’t expect nonfiction to be soulless and without opinion, but I do wish that the book was clearer on those biases or at least dove moreso into those opinions if they needed to be included. There were parts where it felt like the author had a grudge against Mary Shelley, especially when touching on Mary’s teenage antics and mistakes, occasionally paired with small but irksome inaccuracies about Mary’s life & future being nestled in there.
There’s also just a strange amount of fatphobia in this book. If there’s an opportunity to mention someone’s weight, even tangential historical figures such as French kings, it is taken, and it is usually very cruelly done. It’s deeply out of place & kind of baffling.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Death of parent, Suicide, and Suicide attempt
Moderate: Fatphobia, Adult/minor relationship, Infidelity, and Mental illness
Minor: Pregnancy, Abandonment, Biphobia, Misogyny, and Body shaming
some assorted things I remember jumping out at me: repeated fatphobic comments, a couple odd instances of biphobia, usage of “schizophrenic” to describe someone being hypocriticalheregrim's review
2.0
When this book was suggested to me as "the Kardashians of the early 1800s" I was curious. Turns out they were optimistic, selfish, utopian-seeking, free-love practicing...etc. They were all that the description offered and I hated them. To me, they came across as debased, self-interested pleasure seekers, and although their lives were interesting I couldn't really find sympathy for them. Except Fanny and Harriet, them I sympathized with.
wealhtheow's review
3.0
Fanny, the illegitimate daughter of [a: Mary Wollstonecraft|1853305|Mary Wollstonecraft|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1228515449p2/1853305.jpg], was raised by her stepfather, who famously said, "Till the softer sex has produced a Bacon, a Newton, a Hume or a Shakspeare, I never will believe [in formal education for women]". What an ass!
romantical's review
3.0
Good, though it was far less about Fanny than about the world of Shelley and the others who inhabited her life, which makes it less than what I was looking for, but still interesting. Also, after reading this and "Passion", I pretty much think Shelley was a complete and utter unfeeling ass.
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