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: his estranged wife Cornelia, a woman ruled by her mother and the norms of aristocratic society; his daughter Ethel, raised in the wilderness of Illinois and utterly dependent on her father; and finally, the independent and highly educated Fanny Derham, the daughter of Lodore’s childhood friend. At first glance, Lodore appears to be a 'silver fork' novel — a popular romance genre from the Regency era about life in fashionable society — yet Shelley’s take imbues the story with subversive critiques of domesticity and masculinity. Long considered the most Jane Austen–like of Mary Shelley’s novels, Lodore is an essential read for anyone seeking to understand this brilliant feminist writer.
