In November 1997, a slight book sewn together with string was discovered
in a palazzo in Italy. This was Maurice, the only children's story
ever penned by Mary Shelley. Written two years after Frankenstein,
Maurice is often read as a gloss of Shelley's personal family
tragedies, bearing the same melancholy that distinguishes all of her
works. As Claire Tomalin shows in her compelling introduction, it
contributes greatly to the literary and biographical scholarship on this
fascinating woman who was a significant writer in her own right as well
as the wife of one of the world's greatest romantic poets.