Tag Archives: Literature

Author Insight: Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson’s name is one that almost everyone knows, English major or not,
as he was one of the first individuals to promote Transcendentalism and very openly go against the grain of society’s norms. He wrote many essays throughout his years, detailing his thoughts on the importance of embracing nature and being self-reliant, and he is still considered one of the greatest scholars in history. This is not only due to his way with words, but also to his willingness to stand out and promote thoughts that were typically not accepted or popular during his time.

In The American Scholar, Emerson states, “Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke and Bacon were only young men in libraries when they wrote these books.” Putting the patriarchal language aside, this line tends to strike a chord with the reader– especially one interested in writing their own pieces– as it still very much applies to anyone who aspires to get their work published.

As we discover new authors and ideas as well as look back on the classics, we tend to forget that they were once in our shoes, striving to get their thoughts down on the page and convey some sort of meaning to others. Although their legacies have grown to seem insurmountable, they were all once where we are. This is very important to realize today, especially for younger writers who feel as though they could never measure up to other well known figures, both past and current.

Similarly, Emerson believed that we must discover the world for ourselves and not rely
on the words and experiments of others as our only resource for knowledge. Instead, we should supplement our lives with the work of others, but still rely only on ourselves and our abilities. If we focus too heavily on others’ efforts, we fail ourselves. This holds true in today’s society, as we study famous works such as Emerson’s to expand our minds and knowledge, but we do not accept them as the single truth of the world. Instead, we use them as inspiration and guidance as we continue moving forward and discovering.

Emerson’s message is definitely one that aspiring writers should pay attention to,
especially those in college who are surrounded by peers who have the same ambitions as they do. It is easy to get caught up in insecurities and to have doubts about your abilities, but the most important thing to remember is that we all have original thoughts and ideas, and we should use them as we see fit. Just as Emerson did with his works, we take risks by putting our thoughts out into the world, especially if they differ from what society would consider normal or proper, and having the courage to do so is something he would likely admire and encourage.

by Megan Corkery

2019 Oscar-nominated Films Based on Best-selling Books

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The 2019 Academy Awards are tonight on ABC (8 p.m. EST). Before the ceremony, check out which of this year’s Oscar-nominated films are actually based on best-selling books!

Black Klansman: A Memoir
Written by Ron Stallworth, 2018

“When detective Ron Stallworth, the first black detective in the history of the Colorado Springs Police Department, comes across a classified ad in the local paper asking for all those interested in joining the Ku Klux Klan to contact a P.O. box, Detective Stallworth does his job and responds with interest, using his real name while posing as a white man. He figures he’ll receive a few brochures in the mail, maybe even a magazine, and learn more about a growing terrorist threat in his community.

A few weeks later the office phone rings, and the caller asks Ron a question he thought he’d never have to answer, “Would you like to join our cause?” This is 1978, and the KKK is on the rise in the United States. Its Grand Wizard, David Duke, has made a name for himself, appearing on talk shows, and major magazine interviews preaching a “kinder” Klan that wants nothing more than to preserve a heritage, and to restore a nation to its former glory.

Ron answers the caller’s question that night with a yes, launching what is surely one of the most audacious, and incredible undercover investigations in history. Ron recruits his partner Chuck to play the “white” Ron Stallworth, while Stallworth himself conducts all subsequent phone conversations. During the months-long investigation, Stallworth sabotages cross burnings, exposes white supremacists in the military, and even befriends David Duke himself.

Black Klansman is an amazing true story that reads like a crime thriller, and a searing portrait of a divided America and the extraordinary heroes who dare to fight back.”

BlacKkKlansman (2018)
Directed by Spike Lee
Screenplay by Charlie Wachtel & David Rabinowitz and Kevin Willmott & Spike Lee
Starring: John David Washington, Adam Driver

Nominated for: Best Picture (Sean McKittrick, Jason Blum, Raymond Mansfield, Jordan Peele, Lee), Best Director (Lee), Best Adapted Screenplay (Watchel, Rabinowitz, Willmott, Lee), Actor in a Supporting Role (Driver), Film Editing (Barry Alexander Brown), Original Score (Terence Blanchard)

If Beale Street Could Talk
Written by James Baldwin, 1974

“In this honest and stunning novel, now a major motion picture directed by Barry Jenkins, James Baldwin has given America a moving story of love in the face of injustice.

Told through the eyes of Tish, a nineteen-year-old girl, in love with Fonny, a young sculptor who is the father of her child, Baldwin’s story mixes the sweet and the sad. Tish and Fonny have pledged to get married, but Fonny is falsely accused of a terrible crime and imprisoned. Their families set out to clear his name, and as they face an uncertain future, the young lovers experience a kaleidoscope of emotions–affection, despair, and hope. In a love story that evokes the blues, where passion and sadness are inevitably intertwined, Baldwin has created two characters so alive and profoundly realized that they are unforgettably ingrained in the American psyche.”

If Beale Street Could Talk (2018)
Directed by Barry Jenkins
Screenplay by Barry Jenkins
Starring: KiKi Layne, Stephen James, Regina King

Nominated for: Actress in a Supporting Role (King), Original Score (Nicholas Britell), Best Adapted Screenplay (Jenkins)

Can You Ever Forgive Me? Memoirs of a Literary Forger
Written by Lee Israel, 2008

“Before turning to her life of crime—running a one-woman forgery business out of a phone booth in a Greenwich Village bar and even dodging the FBI—Lee Israel had a legitimate career as an author of biographies. Her first book on Tallulah Bankhead was a New York Times bestseller, and her second, on the late journalist and reporter Dorothy Kilgallen, made a splash in the headlines.

But by 1990, almost broke and desperate to hang onto her Upper West Side studio, Lee made a bold and irreversible career change: inspired by a letter she’d received once from Katharine Hepburn, and armed with her considerable skills as a researcher and celebrity biographer, she began to forge letters in the voices of literary greats. Between 1990 and 1991, she wrote more than three hundred letters in the voices of, among others, Dorothy Parker, Louise Brooks, Edna Ferber, Lillian Hellman, and Noel Coward—and sold the forgeries to memorabilia and autograph dealers.”

Can You Ever Forgive Me? (2018)
Directed by Marielle Heller
Screenplay by Nicole Holofcener and Jeff Whitty
Starring: Melissa McCarthy, Richard E. Grant

Nominated for: Actress in a Leading Role (McCarthy), Actor in a Supporting Role (Grant), Best Adapted Screenplay (Holofcener, Whitty)

The Wife, A Novel
Written by Meg Wolitzer, 2003

“The Wife is the story of the long and stormy marriage between a world-famous novelist, Joe Castleman, and his wife Joan, and the secret they’ve kept for decades. The novel opens just as Joe is about to receive a prestigious international award, The Helsinki Prize, to honor his career as one of America’s preeminent novelists. Joan, who has spent forty years subjugating her own literary talents to fan the flames of his career, finally decides to stop.

Important and ambitious, The Wife is a sharp-eyed and compulsively readable story about a woman forced to confront the sacrifices she’s made in order to achieve the life she thought she wanted. “A rollicking, perfectly pitched triumph…Wolitzer’s talent for comedy of manners reaches a heady high” (Los Angeles Times), in this wise and candid look at the choices all men and women make—in marriage, work, and life.”

The Wife (2018)
Directed by Björn L. Runge
Screenplay by Jane Anderson
Starring: Glenn Close, Jonathan Pryce, Max Irons

Nominated for: Actress in a Leading Role (Close)

Queen of Scots: The True Life of Mary Stuart
Written by John A. Guy, 2004

“In Mary Queen of Scots, John Guy creates an intimate and absorbing portrait of one of history’s most famous women, depicting her world and her place in the sweep of history with stunning immediacy. Bringing together all surviving documents and uncovering a trove of new sources for the first time, Guy dispels the popular image of Mary Stuart as a romantic leading lady—achieving her ends through feminine wiles—and establishes her as the intellectual and political equal of Elizabeth I.

Through Guy’s pioneering research and superbly readable prose, we come to see Mary as a skillful diplomat, maneuvering ingeniously among a dizzying array of factions that sought to control or dethrone her. It is an enthralling, myth-shattering look at a complex woman and ruler and her time.”

Mary Queen of Scots (2018)
Directed by Josie Rourke
Screenplay by Beau Williams
Starring: Saoirse Ronan, Margot Robbie

Nominated for: Costume Design (Alexandra Byrne), Makeup and Hairstyling (Jenny Shircore, Marc Pilcher, Jessica Brooks)

First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong
Written by James R. Hansen, 2005

“When Apollo 11 touched down on the Moon’s surface in 1969, the first man on the Moon became a legend. In First Man, author James R. Hansen explores the life of Neil Armstrong. Based on over fifty hours of interviews with the intensely private Armstrong, who also gave Hansen exclusive access to private documents and family sources, this “magnificent panorama of the second half of the American twentieth century” (Publishers Weekly, starred review) is an unparalleled biography of an American icon.

In this “compelling and nuanced portrait” (Chicago Tribune) filled with revelations, Hansen vividly recreates Armstrong’s career in flying, from his seventy-eight combat missions as a naval aviator flying over North Korea to his formative trans-atmospheric flights in the rocket-powered X-15 to his piloting Gemini VIII to the first-ever docking in space. For a pilot who cared more about flying to the Moon than he did about walking on it, Hansen asserts, Armstrong’s storied vocation exacted a dear personal toll, paid in kind by his wife and children. For the near-fifty years since the Moon landing, rumors have swirled around Armstrong concerning his dreams of space travel, his religious beliefs, and his private life.

A penetrating exploration of American hero worship, Hansen addresses the complex legacy of the First Man, as an astronaut and as an individual.”

First Man (2018)
Directed by Damien Chazelle
Screenplay by Josh Singer
Starring: Ryan Gosling, Claire Foy

Nominated for: Production Design (Nathan Crowley (Production Design); Kathy Lucas (Set Decoration)), Sound Editing (Ai-Ling Lee, Mildred Iatrou Morgan), Sound Mixing (John Taylor, Frank A. Montaño, Lee, and Mary H. Ellis), Visual Effects (Paul Lambert, Ian Hunter, Tristan Myles, J.D. Schwalm)

Mary Poppins
Written by Dr. P. L. Travers and illustrated by Mary Shepherd, 1943-1988

“Who can slide up banisters, banish naughtiness with a swift “Spit-spot,” and turn a make-believe sidewalk drawing into a lovely day in the park? Mary Poppins, of course! From the moment the beloved nanny arrives at Number Seventeen Cherry-Tree Lane, everyday life for the Banks family is full of excitement.”

Series includes Mary Poppins, Mary Poppins Comes Back, Mary Poppins Opens the Door, Mary Poppins in the Park, Mary Poppins from A to Z, Mary Poppins in the Kitchen, Mary Poppins in Cherry Tree Lane, and Mary Poppins and the House Next Door.

Mary Poppins Returns (2018)
Directed by Rob Marshall
Screenplay by David Magee
Screen Story by Magee, Marshall, and John DeLuca
Starring Emily Blunt, Lin-Manuel Miranda

Nominated for: Original Song (“The Place Where Lost Things Go” music by Marc Shaiman; lyric by Scott Wittman and Shaiman), Costume Design (Sandy Powell), Production Design (John Myhre (Production Design); Gordon Sim (Set Decoration))

Ready Player One
Written by Ernest Cline, 2011

“At once wildly original and stuffed with irresistible nostalgia, READY PLAYER ONE is a spectacularly genre-busting, ambitious, and charming debut—part quest novel, part love story, and part virtual space opera set in a universe where spell-slinging mages battle giant Japanese robots, entire planets are inspired by Blade Runner, and flying DeLoreans achieve light speed.

In the year 2045, reality is an ugly place. The only time teenage Wade Watts really feels alive is when he’s jacked into the virtual utopia known as the OASIS. Wade’s devoted his life to studying the puzzles hidden within this world’s digital confines—puzzles that are based on their creator’s obsession with the pop culture of decades past and that promise massive power and fortune to whoever can unlock them.

But when Wade stumbles upon the first clue, he finds himself beset by players willing to kill to take this ultimate prize. The race is on, and if Wade’s going to survive, he’ll have to win—and confront the real world he’s always been so desperate to escape.”

Ready Player One (2018)
Directed by Steven Spielberg
Screenplay by Zak Penn, Ernest Cline
Starring: Tye Sheridan, Olivia Cooke

Nominated for: Visual Effects (Roger Guyett, Grady Cofer, Matthew E. Butler, David Shirk)

Look, I didn’t want to be obsessed with Rick Riordan

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“Look, I didn’t want to be a half-blood.”

I will never forget the opening line to my favorite book, The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan.

The story is about Percy Jackson, a twelve-year-old demigod boy fighting monsters and trying to outlive ominous prophecies. Riordan gives a sassy and witty voice to Percy in this opening line that keeps the reader hooked for the rest of the story.

Riordan answers the question: What would happen if the Greek gods and goddess were alive in the 21st century?

Of course they would be up to their usual mischief: having affairs with mortals, fighting with each other, and forcing young demigods to do their bidding. The Lightning Thief gives the reader a modern take on an ancient mythology. Riordan sprinkles breadcrumbs of information that lead readers to discover for themselves more about Greek mythology. Riordan even goes so far as to further educate children on Greek mythology through Percy Jackson’s Greek Heroes and Percy Jackson’s Greek Gods, both companion books narrated by Percy Jackson himself.

I was so hooked by that opening line that, as a twenty-year-old junior in college, I still look forward to reading the newest Rick Riordan novel. I grew up reading his books, and at this point, I am too committed to the story and emotionally invested in the characters to stop. Though I will admit, I am a few books behind. Being a poor college student definitely has its disadvantages. I know when I pick up where I left off, I will not be disappointed with what I find.

Look, I didn’t want to become obsessed with the writings of Rick Riordan, okay?

That opening line just had me hooked.

You can learn more about Rick Riordan here at his official site. The Lightning Thief is the first book in the five-book series, Percy Jackson and the Olympians, available on Amazon.

by Sarah De Kok

Pulitzer Prize Winner Geraldine Brooks Captures Acceptance and the Hamartia of Humanity

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A few years ago, I read a book for an English class I was taking. When I first picked up
the book, I did not think it was going to be something that I would be interested in. Looking back, I can’t believe I ever had that thought. People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks became my favorite novel – and I have read a lot of books! This story has so much depth to it and the themes are still extremely relevant.

Throughout history, people have suffered hateful intolerance. Whether this be caused by
religion, skin color, or gender, it has been revealed that during times of hate some people can come together to accept and support each other while others turn on one another. This is shown in the many stories depicted in Brooks’s realistic fiction novel. The tales in the novel illustrate the impact that a single individual can have on history as a whole.
While there may be violent intolerance, People of the Book incomparably represents interfaith acceptance and humanity’s unwillingness to live and let live.

By portraying different cultures, Brooks displays examples of both multi-ethnic and
interfaith acceptance in her novel and the reader gains a sense of the societal standards at that time the stories take place. This allows the audience to better understand just how brave the accepting the characters were. Hanna Heath, the main character, says it best when she states, “Then somehow this fear, this hate, this need to demonize ‘the other’ —it just sort of rears up and smashes the whole society” (Brooks 195). The Inquisition, Nazis, and extreme Serb nationalists all played a role in creating the hateful intolerance that is present in the novel by bringing about fear through violence toward helpless people.

History has a tendency to repeat itself and People of the Book represents this beautifully.
By showing the repetition of anti-Semitism and hateful intolerance, Brooks represents the beauty in the brave few who persevere through the fear. People of the Book brings to life the history of the Sarajevo Haggadah while teaching valuable lessons of respect and forgiveness. All the while showing the hamartia of humanity —the unwillingness to live and let live.

If you’re still skeptical, give it a chance! It may turn out to be your new favorite novel, too.

People of the Book can be found on Amazon.

If you have any novels that you unexpectedly fell in love with please share with us so we can love them too! Happy reading!

by Allison DeHaas

Why HBO’s Adaptation of “Watchmen” is an Attempt at Adapting the Unadaptable

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There’s a reason Watchmen made Time Magazine’s list of the 100 greatest novels of all time. Without a doubt, fans of Alan Moore’s 1986 classic and comic book purists alike will likely despise HBO’s upcoming television adaptation of the famous, graphic novel, whether or not the work holds merit or receives critical acclaim as a TV show.

Simply, Alan Moore taught a generation of comic book authors and fans that the combination of sequential art and dialogue, the comic book, is a unique artform. Since its release, Watchmen has been dubbed the “unadaptable graphic novel.” Watchmen was designed to demonstrate the unique qualities of comic books, and demonstrates these elements in a way that is not just difficult, but impossible to be replicated in any other medium.

For instance, every page of Watchmen is structured on a nine-panel grid layout. This gives each page a central focus, the middle panel, and emphasizes key plot points or artistic renderings in the narrative flow. Issue five of the series, “Fearful Symmetry,” mirrors each page’s panels until converging in the center, which displays a character foiling his attempted assassination. Not a single page of the first 11 issues is a “splash page,” where a single panel makes up the entire page. Instead, the final issue opens with six absolutely breathtaking, haunting, splash pages depicting the destruction of Manhattan.

The emotional impact of these and many other moments is not possible to replicated in other media because Watchmen is not so much about the story being told, but how the story is being told. As Alan Moore said, “If we only see comics in relation to movies, then the best they’ll ever be are films that don’t move.”

I wish HBO the best on the Herculean task they have undertaken. Watchmen is not only the greatest comic book I have ever read, but is one of the greatest works of literature I have encountered. To keep with the original’s artistic integrity, HBO’s Watchmen should utilize the unique elements of television as a medium. Hopefully, the show can succeed on its own merits, if only it allows for more people to experience Moore’s masterpiece.

Creator Damon Lindelof and HBO are set to debut the series in 2019.

by Evan Davis

Submissions Closing October 1!

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Just a reminder to all undergraduate students, our submission period for Issue 21 will be closing October 1, 2018.

We accept poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction from all students currently enrolled in an undergraduate program. Our goal is to find good, highly imaginative writing about contemporary life as you see it!

We do not accept previously published work, but we do accept simultaneous submissions. We also pay twenty-five dollars upon publication.

Get your submissions in to The Blue Route before it’s too late!

For more information, please check out our submission guidelines.

Our Submission Period Is Open!

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Starting August 1, 2018 The Blue Route will be reading submissions for Issue #21! If you are a current undergraduate student, you are eligible to submit prose (1-3 pieces of fiction or creative nonfiction totaling no more than 3000 words) or poetry (up to 3 poems).

We want good, highly imaginative writing about contemporary life as you see it!

We do not accept previously published work, but we do accept simultaneous submissions. However, please notify us immediately if your work is accepted elsewhere. Our response time is about three months.

For more information, check out our submission guidelines.

If you’d like some general advice on submitting work, click here!

58 Years of ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’

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Today marks 58 years since the publication of Harper Lee’s 1960 novel To Kill a Mockingbird.

58 years since the world was introduced to Scout, Jem, and Atticus Finch. 58 years since we walked through the streets of Maycomb, Alabama for the first time. 58 years since we learned “You never really know a person until you consider things from his point of view…until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”

To Kill a Mockingbird, a “magnificent, powerful novel of the people of a quiet southern town—rocked by a crisis of conscience,” has maintained incredible relevancy in its 58 years, touching the hearts and minds of its audience.

Gregory Peck’s portrayal of Atticus Finch in the 1962 film adaptation landed Atticus Finch as #1 on the American Film Institue’s “100 Greatest Heroes & Villians” list, recognizing characters that “have a made a mark on American society in matters of style and substance” as well as continue “to inspire contemporary artists and audiences.”

In 2015, Harper Lee released Go Set a Watchman, a novel set after the events of To Kill a Mockingbird in which Scout returns to Maycomb, Alabama. Aompanion to the American classic, Go Set a Watchman adds “depth, contex, and new meaning” to the story we’ve grown to love.

In April, the Monroe County Heritage Museum hosted its production of To Kill a Mockingbird for the twenty-ninth year. The museum, located in Lee’s hometown of Monroeville, Alabama, held its first play of the timeless novel in 1991 as a fundraiser. Since then, the play has attracted a wide audience, captivating students, community members, and even travelers eager for the experience.

On December 13, New York will see opening night of Aaron Sorkin’s Broadway adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird starring Jeff Daniels as Atticus Finch.

For whatever reason, this book, this story, and Harper Lee as an author has resonated with me throughout the years. I find myself bringing this book and these themes into projects or conversation whenever possible. Whether it be a comparison of Frankenstein’s monster to Boo Radley a tribute to the late Harper Lee or an analysis of Annette Lemieux’s Mise en Scene exhibition featuring contemporary art pieces from the filming of the 1962 film adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird such as Spin and Area of Refuge, To Kill a Mockingbird has played a critical role in my academic career and personal self.

Two years ago, I spent a great deal of time sifting through my grandfather’s book collection as he prepared to move. Among the collection of classic titles was a tiny, paperback copy of To Kill a Mockingbird, a title I’ve been longing to add to my own collection since reading the novel as a sophomore in high school. My copy is slightly tattered with yellowing pages and that old book smell, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Written by Carlie Sisco

Catherine Zobal Dent Offers Writing Advice To Students At Widener University

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Author Catherine Zobal Dent visited Widener on April 3 and 4 as a part of the English and Creative Writing Department’s Distinguished Writers Series.

In May 2014, Dent published her debut collection of short stories with Fomite Press, called Unfinished Stories for Girls. The collection includes sixteen stories. Taking place on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, the short stories invite readers inside the lives of characters trying to figure out the problems and challenges of the gleaming, marshy world.
On campus, Dent spent time speaking in creative writing and English classes about her collection, as well as offering insight and advice on how to pursue a writing career. She also individually met with several students within the department for tutorials.

“Writers need other writers. That’s just the way it is,” Victoria Giansante, a senior English major said. “We workshop off each other; we get ideas from each other; and we help each other to be the best we can be. Any writer could benefit from closely analyzing their habits and their strengths, especially with guidance from someone with genuine experience and expertise, like Catherine.”

Dent’s latest projects include writing a novel and a nonfiction book about the Appalachian Trail, as well as a translation of the French short story writer Cyrille Fleicshman with her colleague Lynn Palermo. She began publishing her stories during graduate school and her work has gone on to appear in such publications as Drunken Boat, the Harvard Review, North American Review, Echolocation, PANK and elsewhere.

Currently, Dent is an associate professor of creative writing at Susquehanna University, a position she shares with her partner and fellow writer, Silas Zobal. She is also the director of the Forum for Undergraduate Student Editors (FUSE), a national organization that provides a network for undergraduate student editors, writers, and their faculty advisers.

Dent concluded her visit with a public reading surrounded by art made by Ann Piper, which accompany each story in the collection. After the reading, Dent took time to answer questions, sign copies of her book, and speak to students, including Rohan Suriyage, a junior English and communication studies double major whom Dent offered advice on organizing ideas for a short story.

“I was interested in her passion for exploring the relationship between art and literature, specifically how the art her colleague made coincidentally reflected the subject matter of her short stories,” Suriyage said. “She has a good grasp on including real-life aspects into her stories and encapsulating the human experience and its authenticity in the subject matter of said stories.”

Dent also sat down for an interview with The Blue Route during her visit. The full interview will be featured in our 20th issue set to be published in the next couple of weeks! For a preview of the interview, read below!

How do you create characters, voices, and point of views that are different from your own or different from each other?
I do a lot of research. I think as deeply as you can about the way voices sound different from each other and also the types of preoccupations characters might have. You can have a handful of characters who see the exact same object in the material world and, depending on their emotional state, each of them would describe it in a different way. I try to think of where the characters are coming from in a particular moment in time and find a preoccupation that would dominate their voice. In my collection, I have a number of stories that veer into second person where the narrator is addressing you, the reader. I’ve tried different ways of involving the reader in the work, and one of these attempts is to adapt the readers’ perspective and try to convince them that they are actually in the story. In “The Truth You Know,” I have the first-person narrator addressing the reader and saying, “Now you have to tell the end of the story.”

What drives you to write? Has there been a specific instance or a piece of advice that has driven you in your writing career?
When I’m not writing I don’t feel as alive as when I am writing. When I am writing, I am noticing the world in a much more meaningful way. I’m actively constructing meaning around me. Flannery O’Connor said, “I write because I don’t know what I think until I read what I say.” Sometimes, I feel that way. I can go and recreate an experience in a way that makes more sense or is more satisfying to me. That’s one of the jobs of fiction, to try to create meaning out of chaos. That’s one of the jobs of identity, too, to try to stake, for a temporary period of time, a sense of order in the world. I write to create order in my world and hope to communicate a sense of connection, belonging, and order for other people too.

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Beyond “Frankenstein:” Mary Shelley’s Editorial Work

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As the world celebrates the 200th anniversary of the publication of Frankenstein this year, Mary Shelley’s name will be constantly invoked as the mother of science fiction, the famed daughter of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, and the tragic wife of the genius Romantic poet Percy Shelley—but there’s so much more to this woman than her creature and her relationships with others.
After Mary Shelley published Frankenstein at the age of 20, she went on to write other major works such as Mathilda and The Last Man, but the thing I find most interesting about Mary Shelley’s later career is her creative editing of her husband’s work after his death.
Less than three months after Percy’s death, Mary writes in her journal: “Beneath all this [grief], my imagination even flags. Literary labours, the improvement of my mind, & the enlargement of my ideas are the only occupations that elevate me from my lethargy” (Mary Shelley Journals 431). Thus, she set out to create a collection of Percy’s Posthumous Poems.
To do this, Mary faced the challenges of working as a single mother in the mid-19th century, gaining access to her very name from Percy Shelley’s vindictive father, and collecting manuscript documents scattered across an entire continent. This process of piecing together the best text version of a work through numerous drafts and contexts constitutes this project as a work of authorship as well as editorship, and in publishing his Posthumous Poems in 1824, she reformed our very idea who an “author” is. The Romantic period idea of an author was heavily influenced by “the author on the model of Wordsworth’s poet-prototype, the shepherd,” a lone creator working through his imaginative processes apart from the distractions of society (Hofkosh 247). What Mary did rejects that image completely.
I emphasize that gendered pronoun because there was a definite gender distinction between “authors” and “female authors” at this point in time. Furthermore, Mary did not co-write Percy’s poems per se, but working as his editor, piecing together his work to produce her best texts with accompanying introductory and textual notes, she became an author through her editorial work.
By broadening the definition of authorship beyond the lone male artist to include transcribers, editors, publishers, etc., we inevitably let women into positions of textual authority that they have not historically been allowed to occupy. The more we credit female editors as we credit female writers, the more cultural power they’ll gain—past and present—in forming not only a canon, but a more empathetic society (48).
So thank you Mary Shelley, and congratulations on 200 years of Frankenstein!

By Emma Irving

Works Cited:
Hofkosh, Sonia. “A Woman’s Profession: Sexual Difference and the Romance of Authorship.” Studies in Romanticism 32.2 (1993): 245-72. JSTOR [JSTOR]. Web. 17 Feb. 2017.
Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft. The Journals of Mary Shelley: 1814-1844. Ed. Paula R. Feldman and Diane Scott-Kilvert. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins UP, 1987. Print.
Wolfson, Susan J. “Editorial Privilege: Mary Shelley and Percy Shelley’s Audiences.” The Other Mary Shelley: Beyond Frankenstein. Ed. Audrey A. Fisch, Anne K. Mellor, and Esther H. Schor. New York: Oxford UP, 1993. 39-72. Print.

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