Maurice, Or The Fisher's Cot: A Long Lost Tale

12mo (tall). Quarter brown paper with light brown paper boards, gold lettering to spine. x, 179 p.p. Dust jacket lightly bumped at extremities. Near fine overall. In the fall of 1997, in a palazzo in the Tuscan hills north of Florence, a small booklet sewn into paper covers turned up in a long-unopened crate of old letters and other documents. It bore the title Maurice and inscription: "For Laurette from her friend Mrs Shelley." Investigation proved it to be a story written by Mary Shelley. Written two years after he great gothic novel Frankenstein, Maurice dates from a period when Shelley, still only 22, was deeply sunk in depression. Claire Tomalin was personally involved in the authentication of the rediscovered manuscript. She here contributes a comprehensive and fascinating introduction that explores the literary and psychological importance of the story and investigates the hitherto obscure histories of the two extraordinary families whose lives it touched.