Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft & Mary Shelley

‘A gripping account of the heartbreaks and triumphs of two of history’s most formidable female intellectuals, Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley. Gordon has reunited mother and daughter through biography, beautifully weaving their narratives for the first time.’ Amanda Foreman

English feminist Mary Wollstonecraft and author Mary Shelley were mother and daughter, yet these two extraordinary women never knew one another. Nevertheless, their passionate and pioneering lives remained closely intertwined, their choices, dreams and tragedies eerily similar.

Both women became famous writers and wrote books that changed literary history, had passionate relationships with several men, were single mothers out of wedlock; both lived in exile, fought for their position in society, and interrogated ideas of how we should live.

Romantic Outlaws takes the reader on a vivid journey across revolutionary France and Victorian England to explore in this ground-breaking dual biography of the author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman and the author who wrote Frankenstein – mother and daughter – a pair of visionary women, who should have shared a life, but who instead share a powerful literary and feminist legacy.