The Project Gutenberg EBook of Mathilda, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

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Title: Mathilda

Author: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Release Date: March 2, 2005 [EBook #15238]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MATHILDA ***

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MATHILDA

By MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT SHELLEY

Edited by ELIZABETH NITCHIE

THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA PRESS
CHAPEL HILL

Mathilda _is being published
in paper as Extra Series #3
of_ Studies in Philology.

PREFACE

This volume prints for the first time the full text of Mary Shelley's
novelette _Mathilda_ together with the opening pages of its rough
draft, _The Fields of Fancy_. They are transcribed from the microfilm
of the notebooks belonging to Lord Abinger which is in the library of
Duke University.

The text follows Mary Shelley's manuscript exactly except for the
omission of mere corrections by the author, most of which are
negligible; those that are significant are included and explained in
the notes. Footnotes indicated by an asterisk are Mrs. Shelley's own
notes. She was in general a fairly good speller, but certain words,
especially those in which there was a question of doubling or not
doubling a letter, gave her trouble: untill (though occasionally she
deleted the final _l_ or wrote the word correctly), agreable, occured,
confering, buble, meaness, receeded, as well as hopless, lonly,
seperate, extactic, sacrifise, desart, and words ending in -ance or
-ence. These and other mispellings (even those of proper names) are
reproduced without change or comment. The use of _sic_ and of square
brackets is reserved to indicate evident slips of the pen, obviously
incorrect, unclear, or incomplete phrasing and punctuation, and my
conjectures in emending them.

I am very grateful to the library of Duke University and to its
librarian, Dr. Benjamin E. Powell, not only for permission to
transcribe and publish this work by Mary Shelley but also for the many
courtesies shown to me when they welcomed me as a visiting scholar in
1956. To Lord Abinger also my thanks are due