Bryan VanDyke at The Millions:
In the foreword to the 1947 edition of Mary Shelley’s collected journals, editor Frederick L. Jones complains that many of Mary’s entries are too short, too self-aware. She’s cautious, impersonal. As if it’s somehow unfair that Mary kept back some of herself, rather than filling page after page with the guileless trust that no one else would ever read them. Because clearly she knew otherwise.
Mary Shelley was the daughter of two famous writers, each with cult-like followings. As a child, she watched her father William Godwin regularly receive guests at their home who ran the gamut from the wooly Samuel Coleridge to the wily Aaron Burr (“This family truly loves me,” Burr wrote of the Godwins in a letter). As a young adult, she reread on an annual basis her mother Mary Wollenstonecraft’s famous tract on the natural rights of women; Wollenstonecraft died less than two weeks after Mary was born. Mary would have been all too acutely aware of how powerful—and dangerous—words were; it’s no wonder she chose to record her thoughts only with great care.
more here.