ABSTRACT
Any reader of Mary Shelley’s surviving letters from the 1830s will recognize that the publication of her husband’s writings remained her aim and her preoccupation, despite her father-in-law’s intervention to block her previous editorial efforts (see the headnote to Posthumous Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley in this volume). If anything, this ambition became more compelling as, with the slow growth of Shelley’s poetic reputation, unauthorized editions of his work began to appear (for a description of them, see Taylor, pp. 11–33). (Mary Shelley had herself secretly contributed to one of these, the Galignani edition of 1829: see the headnote to Posthumous Poems). Yet Sir Timothy Shelley, on whom she still relied for financial support, remained utterly opposed to such publication. Given both her concern during this period with the education as a gentleman of her son, Percy, and the insufficiency of her earnings as a writer of novels, reviews, and short biographies, it seemed to her that she had to tread carefully – and await Sir Timothy’s death.
