Stranger than Fiction: Rediscovering Shelley and Mary

Stranger than Fiction: Rediscovering Shelley and Mary, a talk by Dr Nicole Lobdell on Thursday 27th November at 5 pm

Shelley and Mary (1882) is a semi-secret, controversial, multi-volume work compiled and edited by Lady Jane Shelley, the daughter-in-law of Mary and Percy Bysshe Shelley. These volumes join together letters, diaries, journals, and other documents written by the Shelleys and their circle, tracing the Shelleys’ life together. In 1882, Lady Shelley privately printed an alleged twelve copies of Shelley and Mary. Then, she did something extraordinary—she edited each copy differently by hand, possibly tailoring copies to fit intended recipients. Some copies include letters and images that others omit; some, but not all, have passages cut out and rewritten; others feature marginalia that vary widely in tone and substance from copy to copy. This talk brings together, for the first time, all the known surviving copies of Shelley and Mary—of which there are far more than the alleged twelve— and traces Lady Shelley’s contentious editorship not only across the surviving copies, but also through unpublished letters, never-before-seen documents, and archival materials.

Admission is free but booking is required due to the limited number of spaces (please write to info@keats-shelley-house.org).

Entry from 4:45 pm onwards.

The event will also be streamed via Zoom. If you'd like to attend online, please send us an email and we'll share the link with you.

Nicole Lobdell is an Assistant Professor of English at Northwestern State University of Louisiana. She publishes on nineteenth-century British literature with interests in biography, Gothic literature, and science fiction studies. She is the author of X-ray (Bloomsbury, 2024) and has published previously on Mary Shelley, Christina Rossetti, and H.G. Wells, among others. Her current book-in-progress is titled Stranger than Fiction: The First Biography of Mary Shelley.