Valperga: or, the Life and Adventures of Castruccio, Prince of Lucca. By the Author of ‘Frankenstein’.

SHELLEY, Mary Wollstonecraft.

$9,200.00

Item Number: 117880

London: G. and W.B. Whittaker, 1823.

Rare first edition of Shelley’s second novel, which has been called “a meditation on political, psychological, and sexual power” and is considered by many to be her finest work.  12mo., bound in 19th century three quarter calf over marbled boards by Bumpus, gilt titles and tooling to the spine, morocco spine labels, raised bands. In very good condition, contemporary name. A very sharp example.

Valperga "was a novel surprisingly long in its gestation " and possibly concurrent with Frankenstein . "Although not published until 1823, its inception actually dates from six years earlier. 'I first thought of it in our library in Marlow,' Mary Shelley wrote as she was completing it in 1821."   [See: Curran, Stuart. Cambridge Companion to Mary Shelley"]. The preface details some literary sources for this historical tale of the fourteenth-century despot Castruccio Castracani.  In terms of historical fiction, it represents a feminine counterpart  to the male romanticism of Sir Walter Scott. (Ref: Block,  p 213; Summers A Gothic Bibliography,  p.  541).