The Collected Supernatural and Weird Fiction of Mary Shelley Volume 2

Tales from a Mistress of the Gothic

Mary Shelley is possibly one of the most renowned women authors of all time. She is, of course, the literary creator of the iconic Frankenstein''s monster and that alone has guaranteed it and her immortality rivalled only by Bram Stoker''s Dracula in the pantheon of the bizarre. Beyond her most famous literary work, ''Frankenstein,'' she possessed an incredible creative talent, responsible for a dazzling collection of novels, short stories, essays, plays, biographies and travel books. Mary Shelley was an independent, free thinking woman, decades before her time, who strongly adhered the ideals of her father, the political philosopher William Godwin and her mother, the feminist and liberal Mary Wollstonecraft. She notoriously-for her time-became the mistress of the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, and she subsequently married him upon the suicide of his wife. Those familiar with ''Frankenstein'' will not be surprised to find it within this special collection, but those for whom it will be a new experience will discover a superb work of fiction which towers above our perceptions of it from its familiarity through film and television. Fortunately, Mary Shelley did not confine her excursions into the other worldly, weird and Gothic to just this tale of the ''man-made'' man. This two volume edition contains two novels and many shorter pieces in testament to Mary Shelley''s talent for the literature of the macabre.
The second volume of this special collection of Mary Shelley''s literary excursions into the bizarre and horrific includes the substantial novel, ''The Last Man.'' This fine tale languished in obscurity until after the middle of the 20th century and is another good example of the writing and thoughts of an author far ahead of her time. It tells of a future post-apocalyptic world ravaged and massively depopulated by plague. If the theme seems a familiar one today, it should be remembered Shelley published ''The Last Man'' in 1826. It is joined here by ''The Invisible Girl,'' ''The Evil Eye'' and ''The False Rhyme.''