for adding his approval
of my undertaking, and to the Curators of the Bodleian Library for
permiting me to use and to quote from the papers in the reserved
Shelley Collection. Other libraries and individuals helped me while I
was editing _Mathilda_: the Enoch Pratt Free Library of Baltimore,
whose Literature and Reference Departments went to endless trouble for
me; the Julia Rogers Library of Goucher College and its staff; the
library of the University of Pennsylvania; Miss R. Glynn Grylls (Lady
Mander); Professor Lewis Patton of Duke University; Professor
Frederick L. Jones of the University of Pennsylvania; and many other
persons who did me favors that seemed to them small but that to me
were very great.

I owe much also to previous books by and about the Shelleys. Those to
which I have referred more than once in the introduction and notes are
here given with the abbreviated form which I have used:

Frederick L. Jones, ed. _The Letters of Mary W. Shelley_, 2 vols.
Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1944 (_Letters_)

---- _Mary Shelley's Journal_. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press,
1947 (_Journal_)

Roger Ingpen and W.E. Peck, eds. _The Complete Works of Percy Bysshe
Shelley_, Julian Edition, 10 vols. London, 1926-1930 (Julian _Works_)

Newman Ivey White. _Shelley_, 2 vols. New York: Knopf, 1940 (White,
_Shelley_)

Elizabeth Nitchie. _Mary Shelley, Author of "Frankenstein."_ New
Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1953 (Nitchie, _Mary Shelley_)

ELIZABETH NITCHIE

May, 1959

CONTENTS

PAGE

PREFACE iii

INTRODUCTION vii

MATHILDA 1

NOTES TO MATHILDA 81

THE FIELDS OF FANCY 90

NOTES TO THE FIELDS OF FANCY 103

INTRODUCTION

Of all the novels and stories which Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley left
in manuscript,[i] only one novelette, _Mathilda_, is complete. It
exists in both rough draft and final copy. In this story, as in all
Mary Shelley's writing, there is much that is autobiographical: it
would be hard to find a more self-revealing work. For an understanding
of Mary's character, especially as she saw herself, and of her
attitude toward Shelley and toward Godwin in 1819, this tale is an
important document. Although the main narrative, that of the father's
incestuous love for his daughter, his suicide, and Mathilda's
consequent withdrawal from society to a lonely heath, is not in any
real sense autobiographical, many