ABSTRACT
In August, 1819, while Percy Bysshe Shelley was finishing The Cenci (1819), a drama of a daughter's rape and subsequent revenge against her brutal and tyrannical father, Mary Shelley began writing The Fields ofF ancy, later to be titled Mathilda (1819). I In this first-person narrative, a young woman tells the story of her relationship with her father. When Mary Shelley completed the novel, she sent it to her father, William Godwin, who was supposed to submit it to a publisher. He not only refused to submit it, he blocked any further attempt at publication by declining to return it to her.2 The novel remained unpublished until 1959 when it was edited by Elizabeth Nitchie from the manuscript in the Bodleian Library, Oxford.3 Nitchie recognized, as Godwin most probably had before her, that the novel was filled with autobiographical details that reflected the strained relationship between the author and her father.4
