by Shari Randall
If you're expecting the story of two prim and proper ladies of the late 1700s and early 1800s, look elsewhere. This mother and daughter were passionate trailblazers who continually pushed against the limits placed upon them by society. And the drama! Romantic Outlaws reads like an opera (and even a soap opera), with heightened passions, life and death stakes, and a cast of characters that's a who's who of Enlightenment and Georgian Europe.
Mary Wollstonecraft was a philosopher and author of the groundbreaking A Vindication of the Rights of Women. She died in 1787 after giving birth to daughter Mary.
Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin grew up to become Mary Shelley, wife of the Romantic poet Percy Shelley and author of the groundbreaking 1818 novel, Frankenstein.
The biography's dual structure, with one chapter about Mary Wollstonecraft alternating with one about Mary Shelley, underscores the similar challenges each woman faced in her unorthodox personal and professional life. Though Mary Shelley never knew her revolutionary mother, her mother's writings were a North Star she followed, for better or worse, all her life. Far from being a dry biography, Romantic Outlaws reads like a juicy and surprising historical novel.
Highly recommended.
Have you read a good biography lately?
Shari Randall is the author of the Lobster Shack Mystery series and, as Meri Allen, the Ice Cream Shop Mystery series. She loves biographies.
Interesting. I've been working on the 2026 book challenge from my local library (the Crystal Falls District Community Library in Michigan). Surprising, to me, of the 45 book-types, biography isn't one, although memoir is. For the memoir, I chose a book my mother had purchased some years before, In Such Good Company by Carol Burnett.
ReplyDeleteI am such a fan of Carol, Burnett! I will have to check this out.
DeleteThis looks great. I've added it to my TBR list.
ReplyDeleteyou’ll feel like you need a box of popcorn When you read this. So much drama!
DeleteAlways love a good biography, although I haven't read one lately. This may be my next nonfiction read.
ReplyDeletePerhaps both of the books a read are memoirs, one by Haley Mills, the other Olivia Hussy. Mills only is still alive.
ReplyDeleteThis sound wonderful.
ReplyDeleteThe Heart of a Stranger by Rabbi Angela Buchdahl.
ReplyDeleteShe is the senior rabbi of Central Synagogue in New York
Her father is American and her mother is Korean.
She grew up in Tacoma WA. Although she had a traditional upbringing, she found she wasn’t always accepted by different groups because of her mixed heritage.
She writes very openly about her experiences and sometime rejections by people who felt that without being born into her religion she could not really be a part of it.
She has just celebrated twenty years as the head of Central Synagogue. I have watched her through a livestream option and always find her to have a presence and serenity and honesty which is particularly welcoming in these frequently unsettling times.
She also has a beautiful voice and sings some of the parts she talks about in the audio version of the book.
Amanda Flowers has written a mystery featuring the sister of the Wright brothers. To slip the Bonds of Earth
Although this is not a biography, it describes the sister’s involvement and influence in her brothers’ lives.
There is a lot of detail that shows how much she actually did participate in their business and success in real life.
The mystery in the book may not have actually occurred the way it’s portrayed, but there is the real mystery of why the sister never received any recognition about her part in her brothers’ lives.
There is a sequel to this that I have not yet read.
To slip the bonds of Earth