Children's Literature
Proserpine and Midas
1832
This is a short collection of 2 dramas written by Mary Shelley along classical lines. The first relates the history of Proserpine and how after disregarding the advice of her mother, and separating from her attendants, she is kidnapped by the King of Hell. It is only a very short play but it is very charming and enjoyable to read. I particularly liked the emphasis on the relationship between Ceres and Proserpine. Their relationship could definitely be described as adoring and given that Shelley had lost her own daughter just a very short while before the writing of this drama, it is thought that this portrayal of the relationship could be read as autobiographically significant to the author. The second drama is "Midas". The story of a king who turned everything he touched to gold, which started with joy and ends with dismay.
Maurice (The Fisher's Cot)
1998
Written two years after her great gothic novel but lost until recently, Maurice dates from a period when Mary Shelley, still only twenty-two, was deeply sunk in depression. She had eloped with the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley at sixteen, borne him four children and seen three of them die. Thus, though Maurice is essentially a charming moral tale written for a child--the daughter of a close friend--it betrays a vein of melancholy, beginning with a funeral and concerning a boy who has lost his parents. Even the happy ending has a sad twist.
