Romantic Outlaws: Wollstonecraft and her Daughter Shelley

My Book Club's March 2016 read...

Full disclosure: I'm not of fan of historical reads. Although I was hopeful as I do enjoy biographies, unfortunately I was really disappointed by this one. 

A telling of the lives of both Mary Wollstonecraft and her daughter Mary Shelley. 

Sadly, this biography was especially challenging as it is greatly lacking a critical and effective editor. The author is clearly an expert on her subject, but she gets bogged down with the details and loses the readers. I found the work seriously confusing as it jumps between the two women and jumps back and forth in time--leaving the reader to remember who all the characters are and what they were doing when the last connected chapter ended. To complicate matters, the author bores the reader to tears with endless minute details that add nothing to the overall understanding of the circumstances. It didn't help matters with half of the characters having the same name or willingly changing their names half way through their lives. (Ok, so that's not the author's fault, and I can't possibly hold her responsible for my resulting confusion on this.)

Mary Wollstonecraft:
The Rebel

Clearly, the author has spent much time reading all of the correspondence of Wollstonecraft and Shelley. I was very disappointed that her endnotes are in fact, not noted throughout the text and as such are not helpful to the reader.  Gordon has lost perspective and the ability to focus on the formative events. This weakness undermines the effectiveness of this biography.  

Mary Shelley:
Author of Frankenstein

Overall confusing and unsatisfying. Here's a example of a great 350 page work that has been diluted with an extra 300 pages of confusion and boring detail. It's in need of a serious edit and overall tightening of details.

No spoilers in this one...It's spoiled before your start. It gets one star because there is no zero star option.