An interesting biography, with an equally interesting second section of literary analysis. I love Muriel Spark, but had only read her fiction, so was very curious about this work. Based on that last section, I'm now reading [b:The Last Man|30668013|The Last Man|Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1466482782l/30668013._SY75_.jpg|835097] by Mary Shelley. ( )

Muriel Spark wrote her biography of Mary Shelley before she published her first novel. Decades later she substantially revised the biography. Although she doesn't explicitly state this, I'm sure her experience as a novelist informed the revision, particularly the critical section of the book. I like reading novelists on other novelists because they have a different insight into the creative process than biographers who write only non-fiction.

I appreciated Spark's comment in the introduction that she “ha{s} always disliked the sort of biography which states 'X lay on the bed and watched the candle flickering on the roof beams,' when there is no evidence that X did so.” I also dislike that sort of biography, and when I read them I always end up questioning the facts as well as the added color. Spark comes across as a careful and conscientious biographer who does not speculate farther than is warranted by the historical evidence and, where her interpretation differs from Shelley's other biographers, acknowledges these differences of opinion.

I read this biography as a companion to Shelley's Frankenstein on audio and I'm glad I decided to do that. I knew the barest details about how Shelley had come to write Frankenstein, but not enough of the details of Shelley's life to affect my interpretation of the novel. Shelley's husband, poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, died young, and all but one of the couple's children died in infancy or early childhood. I didn't realize that Mary Shelley only knew her famous mother, Mary Woollstonecraft, through her writings and the stories she heard from others since Mary Woollstonecraft died very soon after her daughter's birth. Mary Shelley lost other family members and friends to illness or accident while she was still in her twenties, and the accumulation of loss affected her writing.

Shelley's life is covered in the first two thirds of the book, while the last third contains a critical reflection on her work. Readers whose primary interest is in one or the other could read just the section corresponding to their interest. However, it's worthwhile to read the work as a whole since there are some critical comments in the biographical section and the critical section refers to some of the biographical details of Shelley's life. ( )

Since nobody else has reviewed this excellent biography, I'll write a quick one. Muriel Spark wrote the first version of this in 1951, which was published in the U.K. but not in the U.S. She revised it in 1987. She chose to write the biography first and then to write her criticism of three of MS's most important works. I regret that she didn't integrate the two sections, but the division works well enough.
Spark sees MS as a figure born into the 18th century milieu but cast into the Romanticism of the 19th century. She says that this explains the disparity between her personal presence and her writing. Her life with Shelley was tumultuous; her life after his death continued the struggle. She is too important a figure to excite pity, but her story makes me more grateful than ever for my own quiet little life. ( )

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