Scan barcode
A review by annamickreads
Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft & Mary Shelley by Charlotte Gordon
5.0
The way this biography is deftly constructed is honestly its best feature — a dual tale of Mary Wollstonecraft and her equally impressive daughter, Mary Shelley, the biography highlights the way the lives of mother and daughter parallel even though they barely knew one another. Each chapter goes back-and-forth between the two Mary's, charting the different directions of their lives and pointing out where they overlap.
Despite the knowledge that both women contributed extraordinarily to not only literature but women's rights, there aren't many people as ambitious as author Charlotte Gordon to fully document the intensity of either women's lives. As firm rebels against society's standards at the time, both mother and daughter had extramarital affairs, children out of wedlock, and encounters with some of history's equally famous rebellious spirits such as Thomas Paine and Aaron Burr.
Although the sheer size of this dual biography might seem intimidating, don't let it fool you; Gordon's engaging writing style and the alternation between mother and daughter keeps the reader constantly engaged. You would never expect that women who are lauded as literary greats would be, frankly, so human as they are depicted in these pages.
Also fuck Lord Byron lol
Despite the knowledge that both women contributed extraordinarily to not only literature but women's rights, there aren't many people as ambitious as author Charlotte Gordon to fully document the intensity of either women's lives. As firm rebels against society's standards at the time, both mother and daughter had extramarital affairs, children out of wedlock, and encounters with some of history's equally famous rebellious spirits such as Thomas Paine and Aaron Burr.
Although the sheer size of this dual biography might seem intimidating, don't let it fool you; Gordon's engaging writing style and the alternation between mother and daughter keeps the reader constantly engaged. You would never expect that women who are lauded as literary greats would be, frankly, so human as they are depicted in these pages.
Also fuck Lord Byron lol