Ah, poor Mary Shelley. I’m thinking she has this charmed life – daughter of two talented intellectuals, married to a gorgeous poet husband, herself a writer of what turns out to be one of the most famous books of all time, Frankenstein.Then I find out that she wrote a little novella, Mathilda, that so shocked and outraged her father (also her publisher) with its subject of father-daughter incest that it was first published in 1959 – over 150 years after it was written. While some read it as auto...

Mary Shelley is exceedingly famous as the author of Frankenstein, but this work isn't known at all and wasn't even published until 1959. With good reason. The story is that Mathilda's father leaves England after the death of his wife and doesn't return until she is 16 whereupon he falls in love with her. He confesses it to her and then kills himself. (view spoiler)[ No hot incestuous sex scenes here, this isn't a book by Virginia Andrews) (hide spoiler)]. Mathilda is consumed with unhappiness an...

A novella about grief, written by a person who knew all about it. It reads like a fantasy on ideal mourning, in a situation when one would be allowed to grieve forever, with no interference.

Read my full review here: http://virtualmargin.blogspot.com/2011/08/mathilda-34100.htmlThis may be one of the most Romantic books I've ever read. Romantic with a big R, not a little one. It's so packed full of feelings, melodramatic dialogues, and rainy moors, you'll be convinced Lord Byron is standing directly behind you.In Mathilda, the title character narrates from her deathbed the tragic story of her life. Having lost her mother at birth, her father leaves her in the care of a cold aunt and

not to be sentimental on the jeff bezos app, but i can never dare to explain the magnitude of the feelings mary shelley and her works give me. and i say give because it really does feel like a blessing to have access to her mind, and her feelings, and her thoughts. i've seen so many people say that the most interesting part of shelley's work is her as a person, and sometimes i agree, but when i sit down and read her words i'm sure there is no difference between the two. aNyWaY i'm shivering in a...

This was just absoultely gorgeous. Everytime I read anything by Mary Shelley I just want to read everything she ever wrote, whether it was fiction or non-fiction. This was a very gothic tragic tale of a young girl doomed to death. The tale itself is interesting and tragic. The style of the writing is just beautiful. There are some of the most beautiful and moving passages about depression and suicide that I've ever read. Clearly Mary Shelley understood these things very well and while the plot o...

Read August 2016Update: giving it two stars. I loved Frankenstein and part of me feels like I should have liked this as well, but honestly, I didn't.. The writing was alright and the story could have been too, but I was just so bored and the littlest things got me distracted whilest reading. (Also, I might have to admit to alredy having forgotten most of what this was about.. Should probably give it a reread someday.)not sure how i feel about it yet..

This was an interesting little novella (or short story? I don't know), about a woman called Matilda whose life is turned upside down as a result of her father's inappropriate obsession with her. As expected, the writing is beautiful - Mary Shelley truly has a way with words! It took me a while to get into the flow of this, being out of practice with classics, but I did love how melodramatic the character's conversations became! However, I felt it dragged a little in the second half, and it was u...

A mournful Mathilda longs to escape her concerned relatives who have no idea why her father killed himself. She fakes her own suicide and escapes with a modest sum to live on a remote heath in the North of England, alone with her memories of joy and tragedy.After two years, just when she longs for a friend, she meets the young poet Woodville. He tries to lift her out of despair - but will she confide in him?

I am not surprised why it was withheld from publishing by Shelly's own father...Mary Shelley's dark story of a bereaved man's disturbing passion for his daughter was suppressed by her own father, and not published for over a century.

Really, really short work, virtually a one idea story that Shelley allows to go on far too long. She is reaching here for shock and sensation and melodrama (in the absence of other words beginning in S), but no doubt I'm too callous or too old or something. It's an aristocratic- Gothic tale, so while in earlier works of Gothic shlocky sensation, illicit passions were worked out to their dark and dreadful conclusions in foreign countries like Italy, or the past, the scene of the action here is mo...

Language: Mary Shelley writes in a beautiful language. For the language of this novella, I would give full 5 Stars.Story: It is a simple plot spread over a few pages. In fact it would have made a great short story if she had edited some of the passages. It is about the unnatural passion of a father for his daughter and how it destroys both of them. Believe me, I have not given up anything other than what is in the blurb. Themes: Unnatural Passion, Grief, Guilt and Despair. Also a pinch of Hope i...

The prose is Gothic in perfect pitch and the drama of the story is even more so if that is possible. I’m glad it was short, because I was more interested in Mary Shelley than the book.The protagonist’s life parallels MG Shelley’s: a mother dying in (her) childbirth; a cold, distant well educated father whose love turns to stone; a formative stay in Scotland; and the emergence of a poet with the exuberance of youth.Shelley’s portrait of Mathilda’s father is presumably Shelley’s portrait of her ow...

This novella started out really good, the first 3 or 4 chapters were really enjoyable to me but once she is reunited with her father things started to go downhill. It's a shame, the story in itself is quite interesting but I just couldn't stand the over-dramatized and over-poetic dialogs and actually later on most of the writing just annoyed me. If you like that kind of literature, that's fine, but it just wasn't for me.

Chilling and stunning. I enjoyed this almost as much as I did Frankenstein. It's an interesting perspective on the value of life and the influence we have on others, and the influence they have on us. Although the book is an easy read and very short, it really packs a punch and is definitely very dark.

Oh, Shelley. First a story about a lonely, half-dead monster, and now a tale of incestuous romance.I was very intrigued about the novella "Mathilda." I had heard of before, as "that other Shelley book," but somehow the knowledge of what it was about managed to never reach me until a few days ago.For those who also do not know the story, this is about a girl who is indeed named Mathilda. Her mother tragically died in childbirth, inspiring her passionate father to flee in grief to the ends of the

A book written in 19th century romantic style. Very embellished language. It's a story about love and despair; about longing for passion ( which is surpressed) and longing for death. Although it's beautifully written; it couldn't really grip me.

Matilda is a rather neglected little novella. Mary Shelley never saw it published in her lifetime because her father kept the manuscript. He refused to return it because he was horrified at the suggestions of incest in the relationship between Matilda and her father which echoed some of their own real-life relationship. That is not to say William Godwin actually had incestuous feelings for his daughter, but much of their own separation and anxiety is here along with some parallels in the histor

Well this book is pretty awful. The description hints at incest but unless I'm unskilled at reading between the lines of this era's literature, it is really more about a father's guilt for having confusing feelings about his daughter 16 years after the death of her mother. (Not that I wanted to read a novel with incest. I had my share of Flowers in the Attic when we read it on the bus in junior high.)This entire novel is a series of emotional letters and hand-wringing declarations and I wanted t...

“Am I not the most miserable worm that crawls? Do I not embrace your knees, and you most cruelly repulse me?” Ela sempre serve tudo.