Also published as The Beautiful Widow, Mary Shelley's penultimate
novel explores the web of relationships between three women bound
together by the exacting Lord Lodore: Cornelia, Lodore's estranged wife,
ruled by her mother and the norms of aristocratic society; Ethel, his
daughter, raised in the wilderness of Illinois and utterly reliant on
her father; and finally, the independent and highly educated Fanny
Derham, the daughter of Lodore's childhood friend. Long considered the
most Austen-like and socially oriented of Mary Shelley's novels,
Lodore is an essential read for anyone seeking to understand this
brilliant feminist writer.