Memoirs & Coffee Book Group Discusses "In Search of Mary Shelley"

In this 200th anniversary year of the publication of "Frankenstein," much attention is being paid to the book and its young author. Hundreds of programs are taking place around the world, and as part of this focus, Bernardsville Library’s book group, Memoirs and Coffee, will meet on Tuesday, October 23 at 10:30 am to discuss "In Search of Mary Shelley" (2018) by Fiona Sampson. [The author will not be present.]

We know the facts of Mary Shelley’s life in some detail—the death of her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, within days of her birth; the upbringing in the house of her father, William Godwin, in a house full of radical thinkers, poets, philosophers, and writers; her elopement, at the age of seventeen, with Percy Shelley; the years of peripatetic travel across Europe that followed. But there has been no literary biography written this century, and previous books have ignored the real person—what she actually thought and felt and why she did what she did—despite the fact that Mary and her group of second-generation Romantics were extremely interested in the psychological aspect of life.

In this probing narrative, Fiona Sampson pursues Mary Shelley through her turbulent life, much as Victor Frankenstein tracked his monster across the arctic wastes. Sampson has written a book that finally answers the question of how it was that a nineteen-year-old came to write a novel so dark, mysterious, anguished, and psychologically astute that it continues to resonate two centuries later. No previous biographer has ever truly considered this question, let alone answered it.

There will be another program at the library about Frankenstein on Sunday, November 11 at 3:00 pm when Morgan Library Docent Miryam Wasserman will give an illustrated talk about “It’s Alive: Frankenstein at 200,” the exhibition at the Morgan Library on Mary Shelley’s monster. The show, a partnership of the Morgan and The New York Public Library, traces the origins and impact of the book, which is considered the first science fiction novel and has been constantly reinterpreted in spin-offs, sequels, mashups, tributes and parodies.

No registration is needed to come to this free library book discussion. Please call Bernardsville Library at 766-0118 for more information.