Unpublished letters by author Mary Shelley were found by professor of English Literature at Anglia Ruskin University Nora Crook. While researching an obscure 19th-century novelist, she saw a “listing for 13 documents at Essex Record Office, catalogued under the tantalising words: “Letter from Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley” – and knew they had never been published before. The letters dated between 1831 to 1849 were written to stockbroker Horace Smith (friend of Mary’s husband poet Percy Bysshe Shelley) and his daughter Eliza and discuss Mary’s declining health and her pride in her son – but surprisingly don’t mention Frankenstein at all. Some of the letters are still stamped with the author’s own scarlet wax seal. Read more of this fascinating discovery here. And check the EPL catalog for works by Mary Shelley.
Laura