ABSTRACT
In September 1827, Mary Shelley wrote to the philanthropist Frances Wright: "The memory of my Mother has been always the pride & delight of my life; & the admiration of others for her, has been the cause of most of the happiness I have enjoyed". She had, of course, no actual memory of her mother, who had died just ten days after her own birth. Mary Wollstonecraft’s presence in her life had nevertheless been a powerful and formative one: Godwin had kept Opie’s portrait of her hanging in his study where the children would have seen it daily, and the ideal took on a heroic status that may not have been enjoyed by a mother of real flesh and blood. Shelley’s dedication to The Revolt of Islam, written in 1817, pays tribute to Mary as the ‘lovely’ daughter of a ‘glorious’ mother.
