discovered some hitherto unidentified work. I have found
some new unpublished writings, finished and unfinished,
among the manuscripts. None of them is of great literary
value or importance. But they are often of biographical
significance, adding to or modifying our knowledge of
Mary and of Shelley, especially as Mary saw him and saw
her relationship to him. In the books that are already fa-
miliar to scholars, there is room for further study of the
fictional characters who represent Shelley, Byron, Tre-
lawny, Claire Clairmont, Emilia Viviani, and Mary her-
self. Some erroneous identifications can be corrected. And
there are other identifications and comparisons to be
made. There is also much to be discovered about Mary
Shelley's temperament and talent. The evidence of her
own writing places her somewhere between the angel of
her nineteenth century admirers and the devil of her twen-
tieth century critics. We owe it to her, and to Shelley who
chose her for his wife, to take her off the pedestal and to
let her stand on her own two quite capable, far from clay,
feet.
I wish to express my gratitude to the following: Lord
Abinger and the late Sir John Shelley-Rolls for permission
to examine and to quote from the unpublished material
in their collections; the Curators of the Bodleian Library
for permission to use and to quote from the reserved Shel-
ley collection and other Mary Shelley manuscripts; the
Trustees of the Pierpont Morgan Library for permission
to use Mary Shelley's notes in their copy of the first edi-
tion of Frankenstein; the Keats House and Museum in
Hampstead for permission to use the manuscript of The
Heir of Mondolfo and for photographs of some of its
pages; the Keats-Shelley Memorial in Rome for permis-
sion to examine and publish their unpublished Mary

-vi-