Mary Shelley’s

, written between August 1819 and early 1820, was not published until Elizbathe Nitchie’s edition in 1959 (Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press). The story of the novella’s composition and subsequent neglect (with regard to publication) is a strange one and in many ways still dominates its critical reception. First drafted as “The Fields of Fancy” in response to Wollstonecraft’s fragment “The Cave of Fancy,” Mary Shelley rewrote her text as

(for both texts see

, 8 Vols. Gen. Ed. Nora Crook,

, Vol.2., ed. Pamela Clemit, London: Pickering and Chatto, 1996; hereafter

2). Both drafts, however, were written in the immediate…

2616 words

Citation: Allen, Graham. "Matilda". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 02 February 2004 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=14898, accessed 23 November 2024.]