Manuscripts

Women’s manuscripts of the Romantic period include a potentially vast range of documents by and about women, including correspondence and literary manuscripts, both those that were written to be printed, such as the manuscript notebooks of Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein, and those written for private circulation, such as letters (see “Shelley [née Wollstonecraft Godwin], Mary”). This body of manuscripts also includes those circulated among social audiences, such as Shelley’s novella Mathilda, written for publication but not published until 1959 (because of its depiction of incest and suicide), and other correspondence that circulated privately but was adapted for publication, such as Mary and Percy Shelley’s History of a Six Week’s Tour in 1817. Many manuscripts were not intended for publication but nevertheless could be widely read. They encompass various genres, including the following: life writing (in the form of diaries and journals); domestic writing (in the form of household accounts and recipe books); miscellanies, albums, commonplace books, and keepsakes; legal documents; marginalia; and inscriptions. The term “manuscripts” refers to the documents themselves, but in order to understand them, it is necessary to investigate the processes by which they were made, shared, and preserved, a set of practices commonly referred to as “manuscript culture.” It is also important to recognize the diversity of creative and intellectual activities that are found within manuscript culture, as it served to disseminate various kinds of discourses: literary, educational, religious, political, and so on. And one ought to bear in mind that manuscript culture interacted with other media forms, including print, oral, and visual cultures.