Rethinking the Shelleys' collaborations in manuscript

This essay considers the rich evidence for collaboration provided by manuscript study. I am interested in the reciprocal nature of the Shelleys’ literary relationship; PBS not only supported MWS and contributed to her writings – most famously by editing Frankenstein – but manuscript evidence suggests he might have welcomed and accepted suggestions made by MWS to his own work. The potential for this understanding is drawn from examples of her handwriting in the drafts of Prometheus Unbound, ‘Lines Written among the Euganean Hills’ and the Letter to Maria Gisborne. MWS’s discernible presence in these manuscripts promotes an appreciation of just how closely the Shelleys were working between 1818 and 1822, the years just after Frankenstein was published and before PBS’s death. The Shelleys have previously been depicted as emotionally and intellectually isolated from one another during this period. My work confirms that a creative intimacy between the Shelleys existed even in PBS’s final years